


Get this whole place lit

by DesertWaterfall



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Attempt at Humor, Harry is a Little Shit, I can't guarantee a happy ending, M/M, No Beta, No character bashing, and Tom is a little shit, not the main ones tho, some characters may die, they are soulmates after all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:35:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21686122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertWaterfall/pseuds/DesertWaterfall
Summary: Harry knows that sometimes people are just stupid. Take soulmates, for example. Wizards thought so much about them, but Harry knew better. Soulmates don't matter, just like blood doesn't matter. After all, Harry shared blood with Dudley, but it didn't make him a bully like his cousin. So what that his soulmate was the Dark Lord? That didn't make Harry evil either.But people are stupid, and if Harry's time with Dursleys taught him anything, it's that the best way to deal with one's freakishness is to hide it.So he does exactly that.Translation to Russian.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 137
Kudos: 731





	1. Strong Bond

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is yet another story about Harry and Voldemort being soulmates. Give it a try, would you?  
> I actually thought about this story for several months and I'm so freaking in love with it that I'm terrified to actually write it. But here we are. I'll try my best to give this story it's justice.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first year.

Harry was a freak. That is, he could make freakish things happen. Which was actually rather awesome — really, who wouldn’t like to turn their teacher’s hair blue or jump from the ground to the roof of a multi-floor building? — but was also landing him into his cupboard without a meal on a regular basis. So Harry did his best to hide his freakishness. Not to stop doing all these wicked things altogether, of course, but to at least stop doing them in front of Dursleys. 

That’s why he was looking pensively at the broken cup right now. Well, it was not actually broken anymore — and that was exactly the problem. This cup Aunt Petunia dropped herself in what Harry suspected to be intentional clumsiness because she looked really gleeful when shards flew all over the floor. Perhaps she noticed that Harry liked it most among all other ugly cups on Privet Drive, 4. It had this beautiful pattern of orange lilies intertwined with white petunias — likely a longtime present to his Aunt. Harry really liked it as it reminded him of something warm, like a half-forgotten dream. And here it was now, in his hands, spotting not a single crack on a smooth warm surface, as if it had never fallen, as if nothing freakish happened with all these shards on the kitchen floor.

But Harry was just recently released after three days locked in his cupboard. He didn’t want to go back yet.

He spread his hands and watched shards of orange and white scatter over the floor once again.

Freakish things were awesome. But food once in a while was better.

* * *

Then the half-giant kicked the door down and said “Yer a wizard, Harry”.

 _Oh,_ he thought. _So it’s called magic, not freakishness._

* * *

The wizarding world was strange, but it was okay. Harry was fine with everything as long as no one was going to lock him down for his freaki… _magic_. And that wasn’t going to happen, because everyone here were fr… _wizards_ like Harry and there were no Dursleys spreading mean rumours about him. Right? 

Wrong.

Of course, it was already good enough that he wasn’t going to be thrown into the cupboard here, but it would be even better if every wizard didn’t recognise him at sight because of — what? Because he didn’t die when he should have? 

So yes, the wizarding world was strange and just like in Surrey everyone seemed to think that they already knew him before actually meeting him. But it was fine, really. Nothing Harry wasn’t familiar with.

Wizards were also really stupid sometimes.

“It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother — why, its brother gave you that scar,” Mr Ollivander’s worried pale eyes never left Harry’s and all the entрusiasm he had while trying to find him a matching wand had long evaporated. “Usually brother wands go to… To wizards with a strong bond between them.” 

No, really, how stupid was that? So the brother of his wand belonged to this big bad dude — so what? Harry was a cousin of Dudley, but that didn’t mean he was bulling children whenever he became bored. And this was just a wand — a wooden stick with a feather inside it! How could you judge it just because another stick with a feather was used for something bad? It was even more dump than treating others badly just because you had a grudge against someone entirely else, like Aunt Petunia did.

“I think we must expect great things from you, Mr Potter... After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things — terrible, yes, but great.”

Right. And here it was — judging not only the wand but Harry himself. Really, some bird gave a couple of feathers and now Mr Ollivander was looking at him as if expecting terrible things from him too? How can anyone be that stupid?

Harry walked from the shop tightly holding his wand close to himself, promising it he would never be like these stupid adults, that he wouldn’t keep anything against it just because its brother was... evil or something.

Though, seeing that most adults were stupid like that, Harry should better keep the lineage of his wand secret.

* * *

_Not Slytherin,_ _not Slytherin,_ Harry thought feverishly, while the Hat muttered something inside his head. He didn’t like what other’s said about members of this House, and he didn’t want it, didn’t want it at all.

“ _Not Slytherin, eh?_ ” an ancient voice whispered in his mind. “ _Are you sure? You could become great there, you know._ ”

 _But I don’t want to be great,_ he argued, confused.

“ _You don’t? Well, what is it that you want then?_ ”

 _I don’t know._ _I guess I want… friends?_ An image of a redhead from the train flashed before his eyes. He was really nice to Harry, didn’t he? Maybe they could become friends one day.

“ _Well then,_ ” the quiet laugh rang through his head. “ _Better be_ GRYFFINDOR!”

* * *

“Why?” with a heavy sign Harry dropped on the bench near Ron, “Why does everyone come to me just to look me in the face and then simply walk away? Without saying a single word?!”

He didn’t really expect the redhead to answer, but he was so tired of all these strange encounters that he just had to whine to someone. Students — from all years and Houses! — just eagerly walked towards him and then left after a second with a sad expression on their faces. It made no sense, they didn’t even comment on his scar or anything, they just went and go!

“You’re lucky,” replied Ron, not raising his head from the chessboard. “It’s easier for you to check if your soulmate is here — everyone already wants to look you in the eyes! I didn’t even meet with everyone from Gryffindor, and there are other houses! But at least I shouldn’t worry about Slytherins — they’re snakes, there’re can’t be anyone waiting for me.”

Ron laughed, while still playing and, of course, winning against the magic of a chessboard. Harry stared at him in amazement — somehow all this, while still baffling Harry, made perfect sense to Ron!

Wait, did he said… “Soulmates?” 

“Yeah,” this time Ron did raise his head, looking slightly surprised. “Why else do you think everyone wants to meet your eyes?” 

“Ah, of course, that explains everything,” Harry rolled his eyes but apparently Ron didn’t understand sarcasm as he just nodded and returned to the chessboard. “So, what _are_ soulmates?”

At this Ron’s head shot up and the jaw dropped down. Harry, finally having all his attention, leaned towards to rest his head on the elbows, anticipating one more lecture on wizarding-things-that-he-didn’t-know-about.

“You don’t know what soulmates are?!” exclaimed the redhead, throwing up his hands and accidentally flipping the chessboard from the table in the process.

“Nope,” he shook his head as if it wasn’t obvious before.

“No way! You mean to say, muggles don’t have soulmates?”

“Nope,” repeated Harry with a sigh.

Ron froze with mouth open, looking at the Harry with a horrified expression. After several seconds passed without him saying anything, Harry waved his hand at him, prompting. “So, soulmates?”

“Oh, right,” redhead blinked several times, coming to his senses. “Soulmates are like, I dunno, your second half, your true love — well, not always, sometimes it’s like with Fred and George, but anyway! It’s, well, the perfect match, someone who would always understand you no matter what,” here Ron’s voice dimmed a little. “But most wizards never find their soulmate, because they could be anyone and there are really a huge lot of people out there,” then his eyes lit up again. “But if you _do_ find them, it’s like your life finally has a meaning! At least that’s what mum and dad say, and Charlie.”

“Wow,” exhaled Harry, absolutely captivated by the concept. “So, your parents and?..”

“Yeah, our family is pretty lucky with soulmates!” cheerfully nodded Ron. “Mum and dad are ones, and Fred and George, but they’re twins so it’s no wonder, and Charlie found his last year,” then he made huge eyes and added. “In _Romania_!”

Harry whistled. It sounded like something really far away — he didn’t even know where Romania is at all.

“Yes,” nodded Ron meaningfully. “That’s why everyone hopes to find their soulmates at Hogwarts. It’s much easier than, you know, travel around the world trying to find them.” 

Harry definitely agreed with that.

“But how do you understand that you found them?”

“Well, that’s the easiest part. Your eyes just meet and that’s all, you suddenly know that you’re soulmates!” Ron’s eyes become dreamy and he stared into space, clearly envisioning something. “The world becomes brighter, sounds are richer and now you can always be together, forever and ever!..”

“Cool,” whispered Harry, silly smile on his face. Now he understood why everyone was trying to catch his eyes. He would actually try to do it himself with everyone he meets from now on. Even with Slytherins!

They sat like that in silence for some time, until the loud thud of a heavy book being dropped on the table startled them back into reality.

“Are you daydreaming?” Hermione looked at them disapprovingly. “Don’t you two have a Potion essay to finish for tomorrow?”

Both boys winced and shared a pained look.

“Snape would mark me with a T anyway, so why should I bother?” reasonably objected Harry. Snape was one of these adults who were told some terrible things about him — like teachers in his old muggle school — and believed them in a heartbeat, treating him like a criminal no matter what he did. Harry learned long ago that there was nothing he could do to change their minds. He tried several times, he really did, but a word from Dursleys always weighed more than a thousand words from him. Harry had no idea who in the wizarding world could say something similar to Snape, but this time he would admit his defeat without unnecessary complaints and just roll with it.

“It’s _Professor_ Snape, Harry!” he was predictably corrected. “And you don’t write essays just to get a mark, but to learn something from it!”

“Whatever,” murmured Harry, already regretting he raised this topic.

“I was telling Harry about soulmates!” quickly came Ron to his defence. Harry sent him a thankful glance. “Do _you_ know what they are? Harry didn’t know, can you imagine it!”

“Of course,” shrugged the bushy-haired girl, opening her book. “That’s a rather silly concept.”

“What?!” exclaimed both boys, staring at her in bewilderment.

“Well yes,” she looked at them as if what she was telling was absolutely obvious, which happened almost every time she spoke to them. “The mere thought that there exists some perfect match for anyone it ridiculous! Human relationships are much more complex than that. It’s not enough that your ‘souls’,” she mockingly made a quotes gesture, “are matching or that deep inside you’re similar. Your upbringing also matters, and culture differences! If two identical twins would be raised separately, they will be different and maybe don’t even like each other! And I’m not even talking about age gaps — what if one of the pair is significantly older? And why there may be only one soulmate? Why not several? And what if the person is blind — they would never be able to find their soulmate? It just doesn’t make sense!”

Hermione finished her outburst and Ron was gaping at her like fish out of water.

“Do you mean my parents being soulmates is stupid? Or Fred and George? They’re real soulmates and they perfect for each other!..”

“You can’t really know it for sure,” argued Hermione. “It’s not like they checked everyone else in the world, did they?”

“Well, that’s what magic is for! And anyway, if you don’t understand something, that doesn’t make it stupid!”

Hermione was taking a deep breath in and Ron’s face was of an alarmingly close colour to his hair, so Harry decided to interfere.

“Oh, is it a book on historical figures?” with an exaggerated interest he leaned over terrifyingly thick book Hermione brought. “Did you find anything about Flamel?”

“Well, not yet, I just took it, but it has a whole section about…” she launched into her favourite topic — books and everything related to books — and quickly forgot about the whole debacle. Ron sent him a quick grateful smile and Harry smiled back.

Wasn’t it what the friends were for?

* * *

In the Mirror of Erised he saw three figures — his parents and his soulmate.

* * *

Next time he saw the Mirror — tied up and forced to stand before it by an insane Professor listening to some cold invisible voice — it was only his soulmate in there.

The dark figure, just a tad taller than Harry and with indecipherable features, was tossing up the rough blood-red stone in his hand, up and down, up and down, red edges gleaming in the lights. The mirror-Harry smiled at him and hold his hand out, and the figure shrugged and simply dropped the stone in it. With a smirk, mirror-Harry put the stone in his pocket and Harry felt the weight in it increase for real.

 _Wicked,_ he thought. _But now I need to hide it somehow from Quirrell._

“Well?” the aforementioned Professor was actually rather scary while not shuttering. “What do you see?”

Harry decided he was too bad of a liar.

“My soulmate,” he answered with absolute honesty. “We’re smiling at each other and they’re really cool but right now I really want to punch them in the face when we meet for real and...”

“Useless,” cursed Quirrell and harshly magiced him away from the Mirror. Harry inwardly breathed out in relief. Unfortunately, he was still tied up with some invisible force so he couldn’t run away with the stone, but at least it was safe for now.

But then the high cold voice was ringing through the chamber once more, seemingly coming from Quirrell even if he never moved his lips. 

“He hidesss sssomething…”

Harry would’ve frozen if he wasn’t already rendered motionless with magic. Quirrell turned around and in one swift movement pointed his wand at him.

“What _exactly_ did you see? Tell everything!”

Before Harry could come up with something believable, the voice spoke again.

“Let me ssspeak to him… Face to face...”

“Master,” Quirrell’s hand didn’t falter for a second, but he sounded slightly uncertain. “You are not strong enough.”

It was probably not his best idea, as the next time the voice spoke it was louder and much angrier.

“I have enough ssstength for thisss!” 

Quirrell winced as if in sudden pain and lowered his wand.

“Of course, my Lord,” he said and started to unwrap his turban.

Harry looked in increasing horror as a purple fabric fell on the floor — noticeably less of it than was needed to create such a big bump on his head — and Quirrell slowly turned on the spot. There, where the back of one’s head should’ve been was a monstrous face. It was pale with no lips and sharpened teeth and slits for nostrils and, most noticeably, with gleaming in the darkness of a chamber glaring red eyes.

And suddenly the world around Harry shifted.

He was looking into these inhuman red eyes and it was like he could see a whole new colour he never knew existed, hear a new sound, new feeling, like something he missed all his life and just couldn’t put in words was returned to him and the world was finally _right_.

“That wassss… unexpected,” whispered similarly shocked Voldemort.

The magic that bound him disappeared and Harry stumbled a few steps back.

“What did you do to me?” he demanded in unsteady voice but he knew, he knew, because it was just like Ron said, their eyes met and _he suddenly knew_.

“What _I_ did to _you_?” rather indignantly hissed Voldemort. “You ssstupid child! If you jusst had ssstoped crying that night and opened your eyesss — nothing would have happened!”

Somewhere on the background Quirrell made a confused noise that went unnoticed.

“No, no, no,” Harry kept shaking his head and backing away. “That can’t be true, that’s just a dream, there’s no way...”

“Ssstop panicking!” snarled Voldemort. “Yes, I am your ssoulmate,” — Quirrell squealed — “and believe me, it pleassess me no more than you. Now, why don’t you give me back that ssstone in your pocket that I apparently handed you through the Mirror?”

Harry silently but surely shook his head, unable to form any words right now, too busy trying to comprehend what just happened. 

Voldemort decided to change his tactics. He smiled — terrifying sight, really, with all these shark teeth — and started walking backwards at him, apparently have taken Quirrell’s body under control or something.

“Harry, dearesst,” they both winces as soon as the word left his mouth, so weird it sounded. “You might have got me wrong here. While it iss definitely unpleasssant to find that the one you tried to kill iss actually the mosst important perssson in your life,” Harry was absolutely sure he didn’t imagine the slight roll of red’s eyes at this. “I am generally… delighted to find you at lasst. You may resst assssured that no harm would ever come to you from me.” Harry finally noticed that Voldemort — or was it Quirrell? Quirrelmort? — managed to come rather close to him and he started to back away to the flame door again. Voldemort frowned, but continued as if nothing happened. “I… apologisse for all the pain I already causssed you and I would gladly rectify it… But I need a body firsst. So… pleassse, _give me the Ssstone_.”

They stood not two steps away from each other, eyes never moving away — they were actually rather pretty for a monster, Harry noticed half-absently — the heat of a flame door behind burning Harry’s back as he was efficiently trapped between the fire and the Quirrelmort.

He still struggled to process just who was standing before him.

Voldemort. His soulmate. The Dark Lord, whos name everyone was scared to speak. One of the most dangerous wizards in the world, who managed to stay alive while everyone thought him dead. A monster, who left a wound on the wizarding world so deep that it was still healing even ten years after. A parasite on another person’s head, forced to live under the turban in order to survive.

Did Harry want this monster as his ‘perfect match’?

The smile Voldemort still tried to keep on his face turned into a snarl before Harry even opened his mouth to answer.

“Ssize him!”

Harry jumped into the fire — what a little burn to save the world? — but was grabbed by a hand and shoved back. The immense pain shot through him from the point of contact and he screamed but, to his surprise, Quirrell screamed in agony too and immediately let go of his hand and the pain lessened.

“You fool! Don’t touch him!” hissed Voldemort and Quirrell started to pull his wand out.

Harry didn’t have time to think. He just reached up and grabbed Quirrell’s face.

He saw the specks of dust falling between his fingers just before the darkness and pain overtook him.

* * *

Harry woke up to the sight of a fluffy white beard hanging over him. The beard turned out to be Dumbledore and they talked — about the Stone and the Mirror, about Snape and his help, about his mother and her protection, about Quirrell and Voldemort...

“What happened to them?” asked Harry. He remembered some dust, but what did it mean?

Dumbledore paused.

“Voldemort left Quirrell to die,” he smiled sadly. “He shows just as little mercy to his followers as to his enemies.”

“But Voldemort, he’s not… I mean, did he…” Harry wasn’t sure what he even wanted to know, to hear, but Dumbledore answered nevertheless.

“He is still out there somewhere, perhaps looking for another body to share. Not being truly alive, he cannot be killed,” Headmaster smiled and popped another candy into his mouth. “But you, my boy, have delayed his return to power, and who knows, if he is delayed again and again, why, he may never return.”

Harry nodded, not looking up from the mindlessly swirling wand in his hands. His wand. Holly and phoenix feather. The brother to the one Voldemort had. He swore he wouldn’t keep anything against it but…

He remembered Ollivander. His pale stare and worried face. Did he know? After all, he said something about a strong bond. Was it why he was so wary of Harry, why he seemed almost reluctant to hand him his wand?

Harry thought it didn’t matter what the wand’s brother did, just like he wasn’t responsible for Dudleys’ behaviour. But it wasn’t about wands really, wasn’t it? It was about soulmates and what they meant. It was about him being the _perfect match_ for the Dark Lord.

But then he remembered what Hermione said about soulmates. She was probably right, just like she was right about everything else. Harry and Dudley shared a blood, wands shared a core, soulmates shared… a soul, he didn’t know, but anyway, wasn’t it all the same? Sharing something in common didn’t mean anything. There was so much more in human relationships than just that.

So what that he was Voldemort’s soulmate? It didn’t really matter. Harry understood it now… but would others understand as well?

Probably not.

Did he want to see the same worried face Ollivander wore on Dumbledore? To see the same distrust his friends displayed for Slytherins aimed his way just because of who he was related to?

Then, just like with the wand, it’s better to keep it secret.

It was okay. It was fine. After all, he was used to hiding his freakishness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd appreciate any thoughts about the story, be it bad or good!


	2. Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second year, part 1.  
> Harry finds out he's a parselmouth now and meets Tom. They hit it off immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, it was months but nevertheless, here I am. The real life hit me hard, but there is nothing that would stop me from continuing this story.
> 
> This is actually only a half from what I initially planned in this chapter. But now the second half is spiraling out of control, so I figured, I'll post at least something? So here we go. Hope you'll like it.

There was really nothing new that no one cared about his birthday. For years the only acknowledgment of it’s supposed significance was Dudley’s mocking. So one may think Harry shouldn’t be surprised anymore that there was not a single present or letter waiting for him this morning.

But Harry hoped that this year would be different. That this year there will be at least _something_ for him. He thought he made friends at Hogwarts and even if they didn’t write to him the whole summer, surely they couldn’t have forgotten about his birthday? 

Still, nothing. Just usual Dudley’s mocking.

And instead of celebrating, he was required to participate in the ridiculous rehearsal of Dursley’s dinner party.

“I’ll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I’m not there,” dully repeated Harry his only line in the play for the third time this evening.

“Too right, you will,” said Uncle Vernon forcefully, emphasizing the point just in case Harry was that much of an idiot that he still didn’t get it after ten years living under their roof.

What did he do wrong? He was sure Ron and Hermione were fine with him. Didn’t they have a great time together solving mysteries, smuggling the dragon off school’s grounds, defeating the troll, playing the giant murdering chess? He thought it was enough for a single letter, but clearly, he was mistaken. But where? He needed to understand because how he could fix it if he didn’t know where he messed up? And he _did_ mess up, seeing that there were no letters even after they promised to write to him.

Was he, perhaps, too open with them? Harry thought friends should be honest with each other and even if he still omitted some insignificant things like the identity of his soulmate, he tried to be honest with them, he really did. But perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps you should be more accepting and not argue with your friends even when they behave like idiots. It sounded wrong, but why else Ron and Hermione wouldn’t write if not to take a break from him, from his brashness, frankness, pushiness? He didn’t know he was all these things, but apparently it must be true as it was the only explanation he could find.

He climbed the stairs to Dudley’s second bedroom — or, well, _his_ bedroom as of late, but he still couldn’t quite get used to it, especially when all his personal belongings were still in his cupboard, locked up — fully intending to brood there until next morning while Dursleys had their stupid little party downstairs, but even these plans were hopelessly shattered as soon as he opened the door.

Because there was already _something_ in there, jumping on his bed without all the care in the world, totally ignoring the furious Hedwig screeching at it from the cage.

Harry hurriedly shut the door behind him, looking in bewilderment at this weird… performance.

The sound of the door drew the creature’s attention and it quickly slipped off the bed, bowing immediately so deep that its bat-like ears touched the floor.

“Harry Potter!” said the creature in a high-pitched voice. “So long has Dobby wanted to…”

“Who are you?” interrupted Harry.

The creature blinked several times in confusion.

“Dobby, sir. Just Dobby. Dobby the house-elf,” it replayed.

Harry still had no idea what a house-elf was, but at least he had a name now.

Then the thought appeared to him. Maybe it was here because of his birthday? Maybe someone sent Dobby to give him a present? Harry thought wizards used owls for this kind of things, but he wouldn’t know if it was really the only way of communication they used.

“So,” started Harry, his hopes high up, “Why are you here?”

“Dobby has come to protect Harry Potter, to warn him!” readily started the house-elf. With huge eyes, he made a little step forward and said very seriously, “Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts.”

Nope, definitely not a present.

“What.”

“Harry Potter must stay where he is safe,” kept insisting the house-elf. “He is too great, too good, to lose. If Harry Potter goes back to Hogwarts, he will be in mortal danger!”

“I don’t care,” finally broke Harry from his stupor. “I’ve got to go back to Hogwarts. I don’t belong here.”

“No, no, no,” squeaked Dobby, shaking his head so hard his ears flapped. “There is a plot, Harry Potter. A plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts this year. Harry Potter must not put himself in peril!”

“Still don’t care,” shrugged Harry. “Terrible things happened last year too, but I survived. And I’m not sure I’ll survive here.”

“No! Too dangerous!” cried Dobby. “Harry Potter must stay here! Harry Potter mustn’t go to Hogwarts! Why go to Hogwarts, if it’s dangerous?”

“Because it’s the only place where I have friends!” snapped Harry. “There’s nothing for me here!”

The house-elf paused and then carefully said.

“Does Harry Potter really have friends? If no one cared to send letters to him?”

Harry backed away as if slapped.

It was true, wasn’t it? If Ron and Hermione cared, they would have sent something by now, but they haven’t. Harry just tricked himself into believing they were friends. And why was he even surprised by that, when even his soulmate, the one who should have been caring for him more than anyone, tried to kill him instead? 

No.

Soulmates didn’t matter.

And Ron and Hermione didn’t matter either if they abandoned him.

“Then I just have to find new friends,” he hissed in Dobby’s face. “After all, there are plenty of people who wants to be friends with Boy-Who-Lived. Who knows, maybe I’ll even accept Malfoy’s friendship, seeing as he was right about the wrong sort back at the train.”

Now it was Dobby’s turn to back away.

“Harry Potter shouldn’t be friends with Draco Malfoy,” he whispered. “Bad things will happen if he would.”

Harry opened his mouth to repeat once again that he didn’t bloody care but hesitated.

What was he even trying to achieve here? Dobby didn’t understand him but it was okay, it happened all the time, so why did it matter?

“All right,” he finally said. “I won’t.”

Dobby’s face lit up.

“Harry Potter won’t be friends with Draco Malfoy?”

“No,” he confirmed.

“And Harry Potter wouldn’t go back to Hogwarts?” Dobby asked hopefully.

Harry couldn’t resist a little laugh.

“No,” he repeated with a smile. “I’ll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I’m not there.”

Dobby looked at him somewhat suspicious.

“Harry Potter promises?”

“I promise,” solemnly lied Harry.

The house-eld immediately relaxed and broke into a huge smile.

“Dobby knew Harry Potter will understand!” he was bouncing on the floor with ears flipping all around. “Harry Potter will be safe now!”

Harry just kept smiling. Well, at least someone was happy today.

Finally, Dobby popped away — which was wicked, Harry definitely needed to learn this trick — and with a heavy sigh, Harry fell on the bed.

“This is going to be a long month,” he whispered to the ceiling.

Hedwig hooked encouragingly from where she set in her cage and Harry knew that if she could she would’ve flown to him and try to comfort Harry in any way she can.

“You’re my only friend,” he smiled at her sadly. “I’m sorry I can’t release you. But everything will be better at Hogwarts.”

Yes. It will be better. He’ll find new friends, ones who at least wouldn’t forget about his birthday. Not Malfoy, though, he didn’t want to share anything with this git, but, perhaps, Neville? He was kind, even if a little stupid, cowardly and, really, why wasn’t he sorted in Hufflepuff? By the way, Hufflepuffs should make great friends because wasn’t it, like, the whole point of their House? So yeah, he should definitely try to make friends with them.

And about Ron and Hermione… Well. What could he do? After all, you always throw away the first pancake.

He will just try to be a better friend next time.

* * *

Harry woke up to the blinding headlights from the window and three enthusiastic redheads sitting on his bed.

“Happy birthday!” shouted Ron to his face.

Later, when everything was explained and they were hurriedly loading Harry’s stuff into the flying car, Ron wouldn’t stop apologizing.

“I’m so sorry, we didn’t understand you haven’t got our letters, and Hermione was so worried, but I thought you just didn’t want to talk or something, and it’s so stupid, I know, we should have checked on you earlier, and I’m so sorry, you must have thought we’re _terrible_ friends!..”

“It’s alright,” finally interrupted him Harry. “I never doubted you.”

* * *

_Perhaps Dobby’s warning wasn’t just a silly joke._

Regrowing bones was really painful and Harry, unable to fall asleep, was lying wide awake in the darkness of a Hospital Wing with nothing to do but to think.

It was just two months after the term started and things already looked alarming. Weird indistinct whispers from the walls that only Harry could hear, ominous message left in blood, petrified cat and now, rogue bludger’s trying to kill him.

Harry didn’t regret coming back here, but he was worried that maybe they will be _forced_ to leave. All of them.

A loud crack sounded through the empty hospital.

_Speaking of the devil._

“Harry Potter came back to school,” Dobby whispered miserably. “Dobby warned and warned Harry Potter. Ah sir, why didn’t you heed Dobby? Didn’t Harry Potter promised he would stay at home?”

“Well then, I guess I lied,” shrugged Harry indifferently and immediately regretted it when severe pain sprang through his broken arm. “What are you going to do now?”

“It’s not late for Harry Potter to go back yet,” Dobby said, looking up at Harry with hope. “Dobby will have to convince Harry Potter to go back to safety if no letters, a missed train and broken bones didn’t work.”

“Wait,” Harry said slowly, as the realisation washed over him. “It was _you_. You intercepted my letters, you blocked the barrier, you spelled the bludger!”

“Indeed yes, sir,” said Dobby, nodding his head vigorously, ears flapping. “But not to harm Harry Potter, no! Dobby wants to protect him, to send him back, where is safe!”

Harry wasn’t impressed.

“You’d better get lost before my bones come back, Dobby, or I might strangle you,” he said in whole seriousness.

But Dobby just smiled weakly.

“Dobby is used to death threats, sir. Dobby gets them five times a day at home,” he blew his nose on a corner of the filthy cloth he wore and continued as if nothing happened. “Harry Potter _must_ go home! Terrible things are to happen, are perhaps happening already, and Dobby cannot let Harry Potter stay here now that history is to repeat itself, now that the Chamber of Secrets is open once more —”

Dobby froze.

“So there _is_ a Chamber of Secrets?” Harry whispered in wonder. “What do you know about it?”

But Dobby didn’t listen to him, he was shaking with closed eyes, tears streaming down his face and he continued hastily in a strained voice as if through pain.

“Dark deeds are planned in this place, but Harry Potter must not be here when they happen, go home, Harry Potter, go home, Harry Potter must not meddle in this, it’s too dangerous, must go where is safe...”

“The Chamber, Dobby!” interrupted Harry, grabbing Dobby’s wrist. “Tell me about it!”

“Dobby can’t, sir, Dobby can’t, Dobby mustn’t tell!” squealed the elf. “Go home, Harry Potter, go home!”

He suddenly froze, his bat ears quivering, and, without any warning, Dobby just popped out and Harry was left alone.

There were footsteps outside.

* * *

“Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again,” gravely said Dumbledore, looking at the petrified figure of Colin Creevey lying in the Hospital Wing.

 _Definitely not a silly joke,_ Harry thought with an uneasy feeling.

* * *

Harry was pretty sure he couldn’t speak to snakes before. After all, he met some of them in the Dursley’s garden and didn’t understand a hiss back then.

Which was troubling him much more than the fact that he was a parselmouth in the first place. Because really, that was just a language. So what that Salazar Slytherin could speak it too? Language can’t be evil in itself, that was just ridiculous!

Apparently, few agreed with him on this.

“No one knows how he survived that attack by You-Know-Who,” a boy in Hufflepuff uniform was saying to his group of friends. “I mean to say, he was only a baby when it happened. He should have been blasted into smithereens. Only a really powerful Dark wizard could have survived a curse like that.” He dropped his voice until it was barely more than a whisper, and said, “That’s probably why You-Know-Who wanted to kill him in the first place. Didn’t want another Dark Lord competing with him. I wonder what other powers Potter’s been hiding?”

_...“I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter. Terrible, yes, but great”..._

Harry stormed back to where Ron and Hermione sat in the library and joined them with a groan.

“I guess apologizing to Justin didn’t go well?” asked the redhead.

“They’re calling me the next Dark Lord now,” Harry said in lieu of an answer and dropped his head to the table.

“That sucks,” uncertainly suggested Ron but Harry simply growled in response. “Just forget about them, really.”

Hermione reluctantly tried to interfere.

“Well, strictly speaking, their worries are not entirely ungrounded — ”

“Hermione!” cried Ron.

“I didn’t mean Harry is the next Dark Lord!” Hermione hurried to explain. “It’s just, all known parselmouths were Dark wizards —”

Harry couldn’t stand listening to this anymore.

“All right, I’ve got tired of this!” he declared, jumping from where he was lying on the table. “Languages don’t mean that you’re evil, because that just doesn’t make any sense, and we’re gonna prove it!”

“Parseltongue is not ‘just a language’, Harry — ” tried to explain Hermione once again, but was quickly interrupted by Ron.

“How will we do it?” he asked Harry eagerly. 

“You have to learn parseltongue too, obviously!” replayed Harry and, seeing their dubious faces, clarified. “When everyone sees that it can be learned like any other language, they will realise that it has nothing to do with Salazar Slytherin!”

Hermione still didn’t look convinced, but Ron readily leaned forward.

“Wow, that would be wicked! Come on, say something, and I’ll try to repeat it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry noticed several other students also leaning forward in morbid interest. He decided to ignore them.

He nodded. Concentrated.

“Hello.”

“Nah, that was English,” Ron shook his head.

Harry paused. Perhaps he should try to imagine that he was speaking to a snake, like during the duelling club?

~Hello,~ he tried again.

Judging by suddenly pale faces around him, it worked.

“Riiight,” drawled Ron. “It sounds difficult, but I’ll try… _Sshshtsh_?”

“That was just some random hissing,” laughed Harry. “Here, I’ll repeat it.”

~Hello.~

“That sounded entirely different,” noted Hermione.

“Yeah, she’s right,” Ron frowned. “Are you sure it was the same word?”

“Of course! Why would I trick you?” 

“Okay then…” Ron thought for some time, replaying in his mind what he heard. “ _Tssshss..h_?”

“No. Still not there.”

“Is it closer, though?”

Harry winced and shook his head.

“All right,” the redhead nodded, still full of determination. “Can you say it slowly perhaps?”

“Sure, no problem!”

~Hheellloo,~ Harry tried to pronounce it as slowly as he could, though it sounded rather strange even for him.

Ron’s frown deepened.

“Are you really not pulling my leg?” he asked Harry suspiciously.

“I’m not!”

“That again sounded different and also much shorter,” Hermione explained Ron’s confusion. 

“Yes, like _ssst_ ,” confirmed Ron.

“But I’m repeating the same word,” said Harry. “How can it be different every time?”

“That’s _exactly_ what I —” started Hermione but was again interrupted by Ron.

“Let’s try again. Harry, can you say it several times in a row, with long pauses in between?”

Harry nodded and concentrated very hard. He still didn’t understand what was their problem.

~Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.~

“That was indeed a different sound every time,” suddenly joined a curious Ravenclaw sitting next to them.

~Oh for god’s sake, are you fucking kidding me?!~ snapped Harry.

The Ravenclaw backed away, as well as many other students around him.

“Well,” laughed Ron nervously. “That sounded bloody terrifying if you’ll ask me, but I think the first part was like what you said the first time? You know, the _sshshtsh_ thing?”

Harry leveled him with a blank stare.

“ _That_ was a different word.”

“Harry, listen to me!” Hermione finally broke out. “This is what I meant when I said it’s not just a language. It’s a magical ability, and you can’t understand, speak or learn parseltongue without it. It’s more magic than an actual language.”

“It’s interesting, though, that you can’t hear the difference for yourself,” intruded again the same Ravenclaw. Harry glared at him and he immediately retreated. “Okay, got it, I stop now.”

Harry turned back to his friends.

“I don’t think it’s possible to learn it, mate,” said Ron apologetically.

“And I still think it’s ridiculous,” Harry grumbled back.

“Well, maybe,” easily agreed the redhead. “But you at least see now why it’s so weird.”

Harry merely shrugged.

Everything was such a mess. He should have just let Justin be bitten instead of dealing with all the consequences.

_…“I wonder what other powers Potter’s been hiding?”..._

Yeah, he’s definitely right in keeping his soulmate secret. Imagine what would have happened if just a language already resulted in _this_.

Wizarding World was so crazy sometimes.

* * *

Harry had never heard that name before, but it still seemed to mean something to him.

_T. M. Riddle._

It was like he imagined meeting an old friend would be, one he had when he was very small and had already half-forgotten. Which was absurd, of course, because he’d never had friends before Hogwarts, but still.

Somehow this empty shabby diary felt extremely important to him and Harry just couldn’t find it in himself to throw it away. 

* * *

Harry didn’t regret keeping the diary.

“There is no way Hagrid is the Heir of Slytherin!”

 _“Surely you don’t mean to tell me that every single wizard who accused him of it was wrong?”_ , wrote back the diary.

That was reasonable, but, “He’s a half-giant!”

_“And still, he kept a deadly monster as a pet in a school whole of children.”_

Tom didn’t need to remind him of that. It was already awkward to find out that the man who brought you your Hogwarts letter was actually considered a dangerous criminal.

“Well. That’s true. But that doesn’t mean he opened the Chamber!”

_“The attacks stopped after he was caught.”_

Harry snorted.

“Of course they did! If I were the Heir I would have stopped too after they almost closed the school.”

_“Perhaps. But when there is already a person who is known for keeping dangerous creatures on the school grounds — and believe me when I say the Acromantula wasn’t the only one he had — it’s logical to assume that it’s him who got yet another monster lose instead of searching for someone else.”_

He rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, sure, it totally makes sense, just one tiny little problem — Hagrid is not a parselmouth, like the Heir of Slytherin should be.”

_“And how would you know that? Half-giant or not, if he has at least one drop of Slytherin’s blood in him, he could be just pretending to be naive and kind while hiding his true powers .”_

“Nah. Have you ever met him? Hagrid would blurt it out in five minutes and won’t even notice. But anyway, I know it because I saw him once with some kind of a fire snake and it was cursing him like mad for not feeding it and Hagrid didn’t react at all. So no, he’s definitely not a parselmouth.”

This time, the diary paused before writing back.

_“You speak parseltongue?”_

Oops. Harry was so on ease with Tom that he didn’t even think this can become a problem.

“Please don’t say you freaked out because of it. It’s just a language.”

_“It’s really not. But don’t worry, I won’t judge you because of it.”_

Wow. That was refreshing.

“You know, so far you’re the only one who’s okay with that.”

_“You are welcome.”_

“Back to the Chamber. Hagrid didn’t open it, so who did?”

_“I’m afraid I can’t tell. Hagrid was the only one arrested for these attacks and there were no other suspects.”_

Harry couldn’t keep his sign of disappointment.

“Why I’m not surprised wizards are idiots once again?”

_“Perhaps because it’s their default state?”_

Harry couldn’t fight off the smile.

“How can I find a switch then?”

_“I’m not sure, but putting them in situations threatening their priced belongings or life more or less worked so far.”_

Against all odds, that made him laugh.

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

_“It is indeed. I’m still searching for a better solution, but I don’t think it would be less messy.”_

“Pity. Guess I should just get used to the whole idiocy around.”

_“That’s one way. I personally prefer to change things when I don’t like them.”_

Well, Harry could definitely understand him.

“Maybe you’re right. Sometimes this stupidity can be so tiring. Like with parseltongue.”

_“Or with blood statuses.”_

“That’s too,” and because Harry just noticed that everyone was already fast asleep, he added regretfully. “Anyway, I’m so sorry but I need to go now. It was really interesting talking to you and I would’ve liked to continue, but it’s late and I have classes in the morning. So, talk to you tomorrow?”

_“That’s all right, education is important. And I liked talking to you as well. Please don’t flush me down the toilet.”_

Harry snorted.

“I would never! I’ll guard you with my life, I promise.”

_“Aw, Harry, that’s so sweet.”_

He fell asleep with a smile still on his face.

* * *

Naturally, the diary was stolen the very next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Harry and Tom meet again in the Chamber.


	3. Life and Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second year, part 2.  
> Harry and Tom meet in the Chamber. Would they be able to reach an agreement despite all that can go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a love-hate relationship with this chapter and absolutely emotionally drained with it. I rewrote it like five times and I can't say I pleased but I can't do it anymore either. So screw it all, here we go.

Harry was in the Hospital Wing for the second time this year. Just like the last time, there was a petrified body nearby. Unlike the last time, it’s not one of an annoying boy he was half-familiar with.

He was looking down at Hermione, laying still with empty eyes open, and couldn’t stop thinking about what a huge idiot he was.

He could have prevented that.

Harry wasn’t the Heir of Slytherin who attacked students. But he was the heir of Slytherin nevertheless. He spoke parseltongue and it meant, however much he disliked it, that there was some Slytherin’s blood in him. It meant that whatever this bloody Heir was doing, Harry was able to do it too. It meant that if only Harry wasn't such an idiot forgetting about his abilities, he could catch them.

The Heir must speak parseltongue. The question now was, who at Hogwarts besides Harry could understand it.

* * *

Her flaming-red hair reflected beautifully in the water on the floor where she lied motionless.

“Ginny!” Harry ran to her across the Chamber and dropped to his knees. “Ginny, don’t be dead, please don’t be dead!..”

She was so pale and so cold and her eyes were closed and she didn’t react when he touched her. He bent over, trying to catch her breath, holding his own in trepidation. There. It was fading and weak, but it was there, which meant she was still alive.

“Ginny, wake up!” he shook her. Ginny’s head lolled hopelessly from side to side.

“She won’t wake,” said a soft voice behind him.

He recognised it immediately.

“Tom?” with a start Harry spun around on his knees. It was indeed him, Tom Riddle, exactly how he saw him in the memory the diary showed, leaning against the nearest pillar without all the care in the world. “What?.. How?..”

“Harry,” he was acknowledged with a nod. “I must say, you make a terrible keeper. And here I was, believing you may indeed protect my diary from being stolen.”

“Shit, Tom, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think our dorm will be —” rashed Harry into apologising but stopped, realising that Tom was amused and not mad. “Anyway, how are you here?” he finally noticed Tom’s half-transparent form, wavering on edges as if he would dissolve into thin air from a slight wind. “Are you a ghost?..”

“A memory, preserved in a diary for fifty years,” Tom quietly said, pointing at the floor near Ginny. 

And there it was, the very same black diary he found one day in Myrtle’s bathroom, now lying innocently by the cold body sprawled on the floor. To say Harry was surprised to see it here of all places would be an understatement.

“Was it Ginny who stole you? Why?” he asked, confused, before remembering why he came to the Chamber in the first place. “What happened here?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Tom smiled. “Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets.”

“What?” Harry gaped at him, startled. “No, it’s impossible, she’s not —” 

Tom interrupted him with a suffering sigh. “Are you going to tell me now how you saw her with a snake while she supposedly couldn’t understand it?”

Harry faltered, “Well, no, but…” To be honest, he never had time to check if Ginny understood parseltongue or not, as Harry was mainly focused on testing Slytherins and upper-years instead. And even if he had time, Ginny was only a first-year and Ron’s little sister, he would never have suspected her!

“I already told you, Harry,” started Tom when Harry failed to continue. “The Heir can be just pretending to be naive and kind to avoid everyone’s suspicions.”

Harry already figured that much, but something was still not summing up. He turned back to Ginny, looking over her contemplatively.

“So once again you caught the Heir,” he commented half-absently, still trying to see Ginny as an aforementioned culprit. Why would she write that her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever if she was the Heir?..

“I did,” Harry could almost hear the smug smile as Tom said it.

 _Wasn’t it weird,_ his mind whispered, _that Tom was oh so conveniently there both times the Chamber was opened?_

Where again he found the diary for the first time? In Myrtle’s bathroom — _right next to the Chamber’s entrance_?

He didn’t look back at Tom. It was easier that way, when the other can’t see you speaking, when they can’t catch any oddities with how you do it. He did it dozens of times over the past couple of weeks, why now was it suddenly hard to speak?

~How did she get like this?~ he finally managed to hiss barely above the whisper and prayed to whoever was up there that he was wrong.

Tom chucked behind him.

~Well, isn’t it an interesting question?~ he hissed back, obviously amused. Harry rapidly turned around and looked in growing horror at Tom who was now slightly leaning towards him. ~I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley’s like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger.~

Harry stared unbelievingly as this handsome boy — _a Slytherin, an upper-year, just like the ones he was testing since Hermione got petrified, and yet he didn’t think!.._ — leaned back and continued casually in English as if he didn’t just out himself as the Heir terrorising the school, as if he didn’t just confess in setting the basilisk on students.

“She was awfully boring, by the way. You can’t imagine how disappointed I was when the next time the diary was opened it was Ginny again with all her silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl,” he rolled his eyes. “You were much more interesting. A breath of fresh air, you could say.”

Harry finally broke out of his stupor and rushed to search for his wand he so carelessly put aside while attending to Ginny. Yet it was nowhere to be found. “You are the Heir of Slytherin!” he accused Tom but the older boy just shrugged indifferently.

“Took you long enough to figure,” he huffed, whirling mindlessly the black wand in his hand that Harry with pondering heart recognised as his own.

Harry stopped his pointless search and stared confusingly at Tom. He never gave much thought about what he was going to do _after_ he found the Heir, he realised. Go to a teacher, perhaps? That clearly wasn’t an option anymore.

Tom was still smiling and looking at him in amused expectation, waiting for whatever Harry was going to do next.

“Why?” finally broke out Harry. “Why are you doing this?”

“Haven’t we discussed that already, Harry?” Tom elegantly raised an eyebrow at him. “The only way to make people _think_ for once in their stupid life is to threaten them.”

“What? But — You — ” spluttered Harry. “But killing children?!”

“Killing? What are you talking about?” Tom smiled innocently. “No one died.”

Harry gaped at his audacity. “Myrtle died,” he deadpanned when he finally found his voice again.

“By accident,” rebutted Tom without a pause. “And by a very unfortunate one as it almost got the school closed and forced me to close the Chamber. Did you really think I was that stupid to kill someone right next to its entrance? Or that it was a mere coincidence that all the victims had some kind of reflection to look at? Really, Harry, I expected better from you.”

Harry almost felt embarrassed because yes, he really did think so. Almost. But he wasn’t going to let himself forget again why he was here. “And Ginny? Is she also just an accident?” 

Tom’s smile slipped. He finally appeared to be serious and not like this whole situation was some kind of a silly joke for him. “Ginny Weasley is a necessary sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice? For what?”

“A life for a life, a soul for a soul,” Tom incantated in a deep voice. “You didn’t think being stuck in a book can be considered true life, did you?” He was leaning slowly towards Harry, angry hissing escaping his lips. “I was little more than a ghost for _fifty years._ But now, Harry, the weaker she becomes, the stronger I am, and soon I won’t be a mere _memory_ anymore.”

_‘A little more than a ghost.’_

And wasn’t that a terrifying thought? Tom was so much more than any ghost or portrait Harry met at Hogwarts. He was cunning and patient, he planned the attacks, he was careful with the information he shared — _he never told he didn’t know who the Heir was, he only told what everyone else was thinking_ — and unlike ghosts and portraits, he was _alive_ , he was able to think and feel, and not just being obsessed with joining the Headless Hunt like Sir Nicholas or trying to sing like the Fat Lady.

And yet, he was stuck in a book. Alone. 

For fifty years.

Of course he was ready to do anything to get out of it. Harry would have too.

But it didn’t mean he agreed on the methods Tom chose. “There must be another way to leave the diary!”

“There is not,” calmly retorted Tom.

“There _must_ be! This is what magic is for, it can do everything if you just figure out how —”

Tom merely scoffed, “And what a second-year would know about magic and its borders?”

“But you are only a student too,” pointed Harry out and continued heatedly. “How can you be so sure this is the only way? We can read books and… research stuff and I’m sure we’ll find something!”

Tom’s eyebrows suddenly shot up at this. “You would help me?”

“Of course I will!” answered Harry immediately. Shouldn’t it be obvious? “I wouldn’t like living in a diary either, you know.”

Tom spread his arms as if showing the Chamber around them in case Harry forgot where they are. “After everything I’ve done?”

That made Harry pause. It wasn’t just Tom standing there, the boy he spent a single evening speaking with but who felt like an old childhood friend. It was the Heir of Slytherin, who even before being thrown in a book was already attacking students. He declared the hunt on Muggleborns, framed Hagrid, killed Myrtle — albeit accidentally — and almost got Harry’s only home closed. Harry probably shouldn’t be so eager to help him, now that he thought about it.

But the longer Harry thought, the more he realised he didn’t really care about things he should or shouldn’t do.

“Yes,” he locked eyes with Tom, trying to convey that he was telling the truth. “I get it where you come from with all of this, I truly do. It sounds crazy, sure, but threatening people… works, you were right about it. Professors started to pay more attention to us, there were fewer fights in the corridors and people stopped calling muggleborns slurs so much…” he hesitated then, but after a small pause continued firmly. “But killing people is _wrong._ Sure, it may teach them even more, but Ginny doesn’t deserve it, she didn’t even do anything to you, and they’ll try to close the school again, Tom! You must understand that it’s just… it’s just too much.”

Tom kept staring at him, bewildered, his head tilted to one side in silent consideration. He didn’t say anything.

Harry felt compelled to continue, for some reason desperately wishing for Tom to listen, to _understand_. “We’ll find another way to give you a proper body, without killing anyone, Tom, I promise.”

He was met by silence again. Harry was darting between Tom’s eyes, trying to decipher what he was thinking. He didn’t know why that felt so important, but it did, as if his whole life depended on whether Tom listened to him or not. 

~Please,~ Harry whispered, not knowing what else to say, how else to express the desperation he felt.

Tom made a shuddering breath. He looked conflicted, and Harry couldn’t fathom why, why it was so difficult for him to believe someone understood him and wanted to help.

_...but it wasn’t true, he knew how it can be, and how can he ask someone to trust a stranger when he can’t even trust his friends..._

“All right,” suddenly exhaled Tom. “We’ll do it your way.”

Harry freezes. It was so sudden, and there was still that strange conflicted look in Tom’s eyes, that he was afraid to believe what he was hearing. “We will? You agree?”

Tom nodded. For some reason, Harry wanted to hear it.

“You’ll stop killing Ginny and we’ll find another way for you to leave the diary?”

“Yes,” he said it this time, somehow understanding Harry’s unease. 

Harry still didn’t let himself relax. “You promise?”

Tom stared at him for some time more, something indecipherable fleeting through his eyes. “I promise,” he solemnly said.

And Harry could breathe again.

Everything was alright. Tom listened and no one will die today. Despite that, a bit of slightly hysterical laughter still escaped him. Merlin, it was ridiculous how nervous he was. But of course Tom listened. Harry understood him, and Tom understood him too. It felt so _right_ , and Tom understood it, of course he did! Everything will be alright now.

“Harry?”

He looked up to see clearly concerned Tom, hesitantly reaching for him with a semi-transparent hand. Harry realised he still didn’t say anything and probably laughed for a bit more than he thought.

“Yeah,” he took a deep breath, trying to calm down. Good Godric, it was so embarrassing. “I just — I — _Thank you_.”

He didn’t think that these simple words expressed how much he was feeling at the moment, but Tom hummed quietly as if he understood nevertheless — _and of course he did, it was Tom, he will always understand._

Finally taking himself under control, Harry looked around the Chamber. Ginny was still lying there, but now, when he wasn’t so pressed on time, Harry could appreciate how… mesmerising she looked like this. Layed under the feet of an enormous statue like a sacrifice she is — _was_ — fire hair spread around like a halo, matching beautifully with the Gryffindor-red of her robes, face so dreadfully pale and yet so calm as if she just fell asleep and then died peacefully in a dream...

Right. This mess was still far from being over. “We need to come up with something to tell others now.”

“True,” hummed Tom, who was examining Ginny critically too, like an artist contemplating about their work. He seemed pleased with himself, and Harry agreed that he had every right to be. “I doubt they would understand me as easily as you did.”

“So we lie,” concluded Harry.

“So we lie,” nodded Tom, turning to look at Harry again. “But, I have some questions first.”

“Sure,” Harry half-absently waved his hand, prompting. He tried not to look at Ginny anymore or else he got distracted again. So. Perhaps another framing was in order? But who? It must be someone who was at least theoretically able to invoke all these attacks, so they couldn’t frame just anyone...

“How had you survived Lord Voldemort?”

Harry’s head shot up in surprise. “What? Why do you want to know? Voldemort was after your time.”

“Ginny wrote about you,” explained Tom. “And quite a lot if I might add. You see, she hoped to be your soulmate,” — Harry twitched at the mention, soulmates was not his favourite topic — “and was ever so disappointed when you turned out not to be. Though she soon switched to think _I_ was her soulmate instead. _That_ was hilarious,” he shook his head, laughing. “Anyway, she told me about _You-Know-Who_ ,” Tom rolled his eyes, amused. “And it fascinates me how you managed to defeat the Dark Lord, escaping with nothing but a scar, while his powers were destroyed. How did you do that?”

“Simple. I just didn’t,” Harry shrugged. “I mean, it’s all bullshit. I was fifteen months old, for Merlin’s sake, I couldn't do anything even if I tried. But my mum loved me and she… died for me, and somehow it stopped him. Although Voldemort didn’t die, he’s lurking somewhere out there as a wraith, possessing people and whatnot.”

Tom paused, mulling things over. “I see. So there is nothing special about you, after all.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint,” Harry snorted. “I keep telling people that I'm just Harry and not some ridiculous Boy-Who-Lived they imagined, but they just don’t listen. I bet Ginny told you lots of stuff about me she couldn’t possibly know.”

“She did,” confirmed Tom, smile slipping. “But I was wondering, you see. Because there are strange likenesses between us, Harry. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by muggles. Probably the only two parselmouths to come to Hogwarts since the great Slytherin himself. We even look something alike.”

“Well, I definitely wouldn’t complain if I’ll grow up to look like you,” Harry laughed, wistfully looking Tom over. “Not much hope for my hair, though. They’re a disaster.”

Tom stifled a snicker, smiling again. “Where has your faith in magic gone? You just recently said it could do literally everything.”

“What, you believe there’s still some chance?” 

Tom made a show of deeply thinking it over. “No,” he finally concluded. “They are indeed a disaster.”

Harry pouted. “I would be even more handsome with messy hair anyway.” Then he realised he got distracted again — that was all Tom’s fault, really — and the time was quickly ticking away. He sobered up. “Do you have more questions? Because we really need to do something about all this mess. I already have some ideas!”

Tom sobered up too, face serious. “No, that’s all I wanted to know.”

“Good. So, I think the easiest way is to frame someone again for all the petrifications,” he looked at Tom, but the older boy only motioned for him to continue. “I suggest Lockart. He’s awful and he just tried to wipe out my memories so I think he deserves it. What do you think?”

“It may work,” Tom hummed approvingly. “But alas, there is no need to.”

“What do you mean?” Harry faltered, confused. “You have another plan?”

“You may say so.” He didn’t elaborate, though, and his eyes gained that indecipherable look in them again.

Harry didn’t like the sound of it, but he tossed these thoughts aside. “All right. What is it?”

Tom came closer, looking over Harry with a slight tilt of his head. Suddenly Harry understood what that look may mean. Was it… pity? _Why?_ “Oh, Harry. You’re so young yet,” Tom whispered and stoped, not two steps from him. “And so foolish.”

Harry took one unconscious step back. Something was wrong. But it was so right before, then why, why it would suddenly — 

Tom slowly broke into a huge, cruel smile. “I can’t stop killing Ginny.”

— feel so wrong.

“What,” he quietly mouthed.

Tom laughed. And it was a cold laugh, nothing like what Harry heard a mere minute ago — _yet it sounded so familiar, where had he heard it before?_ — like Tom simply disappeared and someone else was now standing in his stead, someone Harry didn’t know, didn’t know at all.

_...but it wasn’t quite true either, was it?.._

_He knew him. Recognised him._

“You promised, Tom,” stubbornly whispered Harry, not willing to listen to this laughter, to listen to the voice inside his head.

Tom’s face displayed an honest surprise — or what looked like an honest surprise, _how could he be sure anymore?_ “Did I? Well then, I guess I lied.”

Harry stumbled back. He wouldn’t believe it, it can’t be true, it _shouldn’t_ be true, _why did it pain him so much?_

Meanwhile, Tom was clearly enjoying himself and the reaction he was causing. “Poor little Ginny! Her brave knight in shining armour came too late. She’s too far gone now, her soul almost left her body,” he leaned closer and with a smile hissed right to Harry’s face. “I wouldn’t be able to return it even if I wanted to, and I don’t.”

“But… you _promised_ , Tom!” hopelessly repeated Harry.

“And you believed me,” he got in return, as it was all Harry’s fault.

“I _trusted_ you!”

“Well, you shouldn’t have. Really, Harry,” Tom was looking at him with the same expression as he did when he was explaining about Myrtle. “I already deceived you before, why wouldn’t I do it again?”

“You didn’t _lie_ before,” weakly argued Harry.

Tom merely shook his head and smirked. “You wouldn’t know.”

They looked at each other, and there it was again, that _pitying_ look and then there was something else, almost like he wasn’t sure and Harry didn’t want to believe it, it was just so wrong, so inherently wrong, and please, can it be not happening, please — 

~ _Please_ , don’t —~

Tom made an abrupt step back, wand pointing at Harry’s face — _his wand, he forgot to reclaim it, he forgot, and now he was weaponless, how foolish_ — voice stern and face expressionless. “Even if Ginny could’ve been saved and you could’ve helped me — which I seriously doubt a mere twelve years old with no extraordinary talents is able to — I still have to kill you.”

 _Why was he even surprised anymore_.

But he still was. “What? Why?!”

Tom looked at him like he was an idiot. He probably was. “You already escaped Voldemort by pure luck twice and I’m not going to let you escape again. I am not sure why exactly he is so fixed on killing you, but he must have his reasons. And believe me, when he finds you, your death will be much less pleasant than what I intend to give you. So really, you must be grateful.”

_Of course. It did make some sick kind of sense._

Except it didn’t. “Why do you even care what Voldemort wants?!”

Tom laughed, lowering the wand. “You still didn’t figure it out?” 

_He did._

He didn’t.

“Voldemort is my past, present and future, Harry.”

He was writing now in gold shimmering letters,

_He felt it the moment he touched the diary, that strange connection, like an old childhood friend,_

rearranging them, making them form new words,

_like the feeling of the world around him shifting,_

‘I am Lord Voldemort’.

_and making it finally right._

No.

It wasn’t right. He didn’t want this.

“—You think I was going to use my filthy muggle father’s name forever? —”

_He didn’t have a choice._

“— I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself? I, keep the name of a foul, common muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born? —”

He did. 

“—No, Harry. I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew —”

“Your eyes are not red,” blurted Harry.

Tom stopped. Tom stared. “Is it really what bothers you the most right now?!”

Harry was bothered by a lot of things, _by a lot of thoughts_ , but somehow this particular detail seemed especially important. So he repeated with more confidence this time, “Voldemort has red eyes, and you don’t.”

“Are you accusing me of lying who I am?!” Tom hissed, golden letters blowing up behind him.

Harry took a step forward. He won’t be a coward now, he won’t bend under what some stupid fate or magic or whatever decided for him. He _had_ a choice. “Yes, I am,” he declared. “Maybe you grew up to be Voldemort, but you’re not him yet.”

“Don’t delude yourself,” Tom scoffed disdainfully. “I am Lord Voldemort and will always be Lord Voldemort.”

“But you don’t _have to_!” he was almost shouting now. “If you don’t think I can help you, _fine_! We can go to Dumbledore then, he is certainly able to help!”

Tom snorts. “Dumbledore will never help me.”

“He will! I’ll explain everything, he’ll see you’re not really Voldemort, and together we’ll fix everything! Just please, _listen to me_!”

There was a wand again pointing at his face. “I don’t need any _fixing_!” hissed Tom.

Harry ducked, going away from the wandpoint, trying to knock the wand — _his_ wand! — from Tom’s hand, but Tom dodged and — 

The music. The eerie, spine-tingling, unearthly music.

The fire erupting in the middle of the Chamber.

Forgetting about the fight, they both looked in bewilderment at the crimson bird with the long golden tail as it flew straight to Harry to drop a ragged bundle at his feet and then sat on the head of the Salazar Slytherin’s statue.

The music stopped.

They blinked.

Tom recovered first. “...That’s a phoenix.”

“Fawkes,” Harry corrected automatically. Tom stared at him questioning. “I mean, the name. His name is Fawkes.”

“Right. _Fawkes_.” Tom looked down at what the bird dropped. “And… the Sorting Hat.”

Harry looked down too. “Yeap,” he confirmed. “The Sorting Hat. The one and only.”

Tom waved a wand at it and the Hat flipped. Nothing happened. “It doesn’t even talk.”

“Well, it’s not the Welcoming Feast, what did you expect?”

Tom glared. “I expected some _reason_ for them to be here, but I guess it was too much to hope for.”

“Maybe Dumbledore sent them?” questioned Harry, but to be honest, he was just as much confused as Tom was. “It’s his bird, after all.”

“Is it.” Tom stopped examining the Hat critically and turned to look at the phoenix again. It trilled shortly at him. “If it’s his way of saying he would help me, it’s not very convincing.”

Really. Who would have thought. “...can we just forget it happened?” Harry tentatively offered.

“Sure,” easily agreed Tom. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes, killing you, of course.”

“ _What?_ No, wait —”

~Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.~

* * *

As it turned out, the phoenix and the Hat had their uses.

They just weren’t sent to help, as Harry and Tom initially thought. They were sent to kill.

* * *

Basilisk stopped screeching and fell on the floor the same second the sword dropped from Harry’s weakened hands.

The silence was defeating.

He was on his knees and there was blood everywhere. Some basilisk’s, some his. It was dripping from his hands, breaking the silence in the Chamber. He didn’t care. There was no reason to anymore.

Then there were footsteps. Harry numbly noticed that he hadn’t heard them from Tom before. He became more solid, then. Maybe even fully solid.

“You had me worried there for a moment. Thought I might need to kill you myself after all,” Tom sat near and Harry didn’t look up at him. He felt the stare anyway.

The phoenix was lying near the basilisk, white bones sticking from the flesh, defeated by the spell Tom cast at it. It was alive. It couldn’t move and was suffering and crying, but it was alive and would survive, which was more than Harry could say about himself. He didn’t care about it either.

The next time Tom spoke, it was soft, almost apologising. “I'm sorry it had come down to this. I really am.”

Harry ignored him.

His arms were punctured in several places, and it might have been fine, he knew the magic can regrow bones, surely it must be able to heal these wounds too — but there was a fang sticking from one of them. It was covered in a thick, sickly green liquid and all around it the cloth, skin, and meat were quickly turning into a black dead mess.

Harry remembered what the lone page torn from Hermione’s cold hand said. Basilisk venom. Nearly incurable. Extremely corrosive.

He slowly raised his head to finally look at Tom. He was still there, of course, content to watch him die.

“I hate you.”

He poured as many emotions into these words as he could, but it wasn’t much, he was just so damn tired and he was dying and this was the end and nothing had any meaning anymore other than that _he hated him, hated him so much, deep down to his very bones, mixing together with basilisk venom inside his veins and it was changing him and killing him and keeping him alive._

“As you should have,” came oddly soft and quiet replay. Tom didn’t appear gleeful to see him dying and there was again that indecipherable look in him that Harry didn’t care to decipher anymore. Harry didn’t want to listen to him, to understand him. He didn’t want to look at him either, but he must, and so he looked.

Tom understood — _of course he did_ — and kept quiet. He wasn’t transparent anymore, Harry noted, but he was still wavering a little on edges. Though he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just his eyes betraying him, glasses laying broken somewhere in the Chamber and the black fog slowly overcoming his sight. He couldn’t risk it and so he asked.

“Is Ginny still alive?”

If Tom was surprised by his question, he didn’t show it. “Not for long.”

_She was alive._

Harry stood, fueled by pure hatred and determination and unwillingness to die just yet. He couldn’t see very well, but Ginny’s flaming hair was still unmistakable. He headed her way.

Tom soon joined him too, all smiling and smirking and careless and Harry thought it must be just a mask but he didn’t care. “Coming to say your last goodbye? Or perhaps an apology? The latter would be more appropriate, after all, it’s not like you ever had a chance to save her,” Tom kept chattering while Harry dragged his feet towards and _she was alive and that was the only thing important now_. “But little Ginny would be delighted to know you cared for her. You can tell her all about it in just a few minutes when she joins you in an afterlife.”

Harry dropped to his knees near her, breathing heavily and barely standing but he couldn’t die now, not when he was so close, not when _she was still alive and Tom was still not fully solid_.

Tom rounded the body to look Harry in the face again. “I can promise you, for real this time, you won’t have to wait —”

“I don’t care about Ginny,” Harry interrupted him and revelled at his momentary confused face. “You, on the other hand,” — he pulled the fang from his hand with a muffled cry — “you I care _a lot_ about, my dear soulmate.”

He saw it when his words registered in Tom’s head. He saw his eyes widening in shock as their meaning slowly sank in. He saw the terrifying realisation and disbelieve and pain colouring his features.

It couldn’t be more satisfying to watch.

“I'm sorry it had come down to this,” he hissed Tom’s words back at him with deep pleasure.

Tom’s eyes darted to the fang in Harry’s hand and he finally realised.

_She was still alive, and he was still in the diary._

“No, _wait_! —”

And Harry was all but dripping with basilisk venom. Extremely _corrosive_ basilisk venom, that could destroy nearly everything, let alone some silly little book lying just beneath his knees.

And it was too late for Tom to do anything.

Harry smiled and thrust the fang into the dairy.

And then he thrust again.

And again.

And again.

Until the Chamber was silent once more.

* * *

He died and his afterlife was made of dust, screams and blinding light of a dissolving body. No Ginny and certainly no soulmate.

He supposed it was for the best. 

* * *

And then he came back.

Apparently, the phoenix’ tears were the only thing that can cure basilisk venom. Harry didn’t remember that but Ron did. And when he came running into the Chamber after taking apart the stone wall blocking him from it, it took Ron one second to see the dead basilisk and his little sister panicking next to the bloodied body of his best friend to grab the phoenix lying nearby — broken but alive and _crying_ — and take him to Harry’s wounds.

Harry still couldn’t quite decide did he hate Ron for it or not.

Probably not.

Ginny survived, despite what Tom said of it being too late for her. Harry suspected it was because Tom lied once more, 

_Or because it was just like he said, a life for a life, a soul for soul and Tom —_

but he didn’t really care.

All in all, it was a happy ending. Everyone was alive and unpetrified and there was only one casualty with memories wiped out clean.

_Did he really believe it was the only one?_

Dumbledore said that Harry must have shown him real loyalty down in the Chamber for Fawkes to come to his help — and wasn’t that a funny thought? To think, that Harry got the _weapon_ in return for his belief in Headmaster’s ability and willingness to save Tom.

 _“Dumbledore will never help me,”_ Tom said and he was right in the end.

Because Tom couldn’t be saved and Dumbledore understood it and Fawkes understood it and now Harry understood it too.

Tom was already a monster. He killed Myrtle and framed Hagrid. Even his memory had nothing better to do other than petrifying innocent students and trying to kill a first-year girl.

Harry didn’t regret destroying him.

He didn’t.

Didn’t.

_He was afraid to fall asleep and hear the screams again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I hope you all didn't get too attached to Diary!Tom.  
> (I did and it fucking hurt to write this chapter)  
> The next chapter is the third year starting and all that is coming with it -- dementors, bogarts, werewolves and, well, you know the drill.


	4. The Fear of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third year, part 1.  
> Harry has some trouble sleeping, but he's fine, really. And he would have stayed fine if some stupid dementors, boggarts and even thestrals weren't there to remind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My muse held this chapter hostage until I agreed to not split it into several parts. Soooo.... *nervously looks at resulting 10k words of total mess* Here we go? Have fun?  
> Tho actually, I love this chapter, even if it went out pretty weird. I hope you'll like it too.  
> And hey, there's a little bit of Tom here! That's good, isn't it?
> 
> Also, I added a warning for violence. I personally don't think it's that graphic, but better be safe than sorry, I guess.
> 
> (no beta, sorry for all the mistakes you're sure to find)

_he stands before the mirror and he sees his parents there as they smile and hug him and they’re happy together, they’re family that will always love him and will never leave him but there are shadows around and the monster with red eyes comes from them and it’s too late, he has no time, he can’t warn them, can’t tell them to run away and the green light glows and they fall, fall, fall into the dark and they disappear and they’re gone and they’re dead and he’s alone with the monster who stands now behind his back and its pale fingers enclose his throat and he can feel the claws breaking his skin and there’s nowhere to run, not anymore and the monster smiles and there’s no kindness in its smile, just death and pain and lies and cold fingers push him through the mirror and it breaks and shutters and the shards pierce his arms like poisonous fangs and it’s all finished, it’s all done, there is no meaning in anything anymore, there is only death and screams and darkness and he raises his head and looks into the yellow eyes that can stop everything and this is so easy and so simple, he just needs to look and then all is over and he is dead_

* * *

“It all comes down to blood, as I was saying the other day. Bad blood will out.”

Harry tried his very best to ignore Aunt Marge. It was the last day she stayed there, and if he didn’t screw it up all previous week, then he won’t screw it up now.

“Now, I’m saying nothing against your family, Petunia, but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. Then she ran off with a wastrel and here’s the result right in front of us.”

But Harry was so tired. And she was talking about his parents, his mum and dad who _gave up their lives_ to save him, and it was so damn unfair that he had to sit there and do nothing. As if they sacrificed themselves just so Harry could listen to some brainless cow insulting them.

The glass in Aunt Marge’s hand exploded.

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon tensed, shooting alarmed glances at Harry, and he tried to calm down, to soothe the growing pit of anger and tiredness inside him when all he wanted was for her to just _shut up._ But Harry must sit there calmly and endure whatever Aunt Marge would say, just like he did all previous week. And really, what could he do anyway? Harry was just a thirteen-year-old boy, orphan, _halfblood, raised by muggl_ — but no, it didn’t matter. What mattered, though, was that if he would be patient enough, then Uncle Vernon will sign his Hogsmeade form. So it was all worth it in the end, _wasn’t it_?

He was so tired.

“Not to worry,” Aunt Marge shook off the shards of broken glass from her sleeve, waving off worried protests from the Dursleys. “Must have squeezed it too hard. No need to fuss, Petunia, I have a very firm grip —”

“More brandy!” yelled Uncle Vernon, desperate for distraction from that undoubtedly _freakish_ accident. He quickly emptied the bottle into a new glass and shoved it in Aunt Marge’s hand. “You, boy,” he then snarled at Harry. “Go to bed, go on —”

Harry must confess, Dursleys were weirdly considerate towards him this summer. He wasn’t sure why exactly — _it probably had something to do with all the dishes he accidentally broke last month_ — but he definitely wasn’t going to complain. Glad for the dismissal, Harry stood up quickly, trying to compose his face and shove down the tense ball of energy in his chest, throbbing, twisting, desperate to reach out and — 

He made to leave. He was too tired, and that wasn’t worth it.

“This Potter,” continued Aunt Marge loudly. “You never told me what he did?”

There was weird hesitance in Uncle Vernon’s voice when he answered. “He — didn’t work. Unemployed.”

Harry was already by the stairs, just a couple steps more. _That wasn’t worth it_.

“As I expected!” cackled Aunt Marge and Harry could hear the sneer in her voice even with his back turned. “A no-account, good-for-nothing, lazy scrounger who —”

“He was not.”

The words left him unbidden, and Harry stood there, one leg already on the stairs, but unable to force himself forward. He was shaking, and he didn’t hear anymore the thoughts running through his head — _it’s not worth it, let it go, you can’t change anything, let them think what they want, it’s not important —_ behind the pondering in his ears. He knew he should just shut his mouth and go, should ignore the growing pit of anger cracking under his skin... but he was so damn tired. With every passing second, it was harder and harder to remember why, _why was he resisting it?_

“Boy!” yelled Uncle Vernon, and when before it would have made Harry flinch, now there was an unmistakable tingle of fear in his Uncle’s voice, and it made Harry feel only stronger. “I told you to go to your room —”

“No, Vernon,” hiccuped Aunt Marge, oblivious to the tension in the room where even Dudley had long stopped chewing. “Go on, boy, go on. Proud of your parents, are you?”

Harry finally turned and faced her, noticing half-mindedly how the blood rushed from Dursleys’ faces. He didn’t know what he was doing, what he was going to do, he only knew he couldn’t bear it anymore, and if she didn’t stop, if she — 

Aunt Marge continued, her tiny bloodshot eyes fixed on Harry’s. “They go and get themselves killed in a car crash — drunk, I expect, —”

Harry almost didn’t recognise his own voice when he stubbornly corrected her, “They didn’t die in a car crash.”

“They died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a burden on their decent, hardworking relatives!” screamed Aunt Marge, and this time the glass in her hand cracked totally on her own accord, so tightly she held on it.

Harry didn’t know was it him feeling cold or was it merely the room, just like he didn’t know why exactly Dursleys behind Aunt Marge shivered. He didn’t really care. He wasn’t a liar, _not like his soulm_ — 

He won’t let her insult his parents.

“Shut up.”

She didn’t. “You are an insolent, ungrateful little —”

And then she stopped. Harry kept looking her in the eyes as he _reigned_ in the ambient trembling of the air around, in that subtle noise just on the edge of hearing. He watched as she took a breath in to continue ranting about things she _didn’t understand_ , but no words left her mouth. He watched as she made a breath again and then again but couldn’t breathe out, as her ugly face coloured in confusion when she tried once and once again to say something, to leave the air out but could only breathe in, in, in, as she started swelling and her body fall on the floor, and _she deserves this, she has no right, how dare she to even open her mouth and say such things, she would never worth a tenth of their lives, and if so then did she even deserve to live at all or should he just take his wand out and —_

“Stop!” suddenly shouted a face right in front of him, and Harry couldn’t remember when Aunt Petunia got there. “Stop it this instance! You are not allowed, you — you will be expelled, stop it, you can’t! —”

He blinked, and then everything came back into focus.

Harry made a hurried step back and almost stumbled on the stairs behind, blinking furiously, trying to understand what just happened. His eyes focused on Aunt Petunia and tears on her face, as she breathed panickily but still stood there in from of him, arms wide open, protecting the family behind her. Harry could just barely make out shaking Uncle Vernon standing upon Aunt Marge, who lied there unmovingly, and Dudley backed away in the corner.

_What the fuck had he just done?_

“You will be expelled,” repeated Aunt Petunia, a little more calmly now that Harry stopped doing whatever he was doing. “You’re not allowed to use magic outside of school, Lily told me, I know, and — and —” she laughed nervously, tears running down her face. “And you’ll be sent here for the rest of the year, oh god, oh my god, you —”

She was right, Harry numbly thought. He will be expelled and his wand snapped and he will be forbidden to do magic, just like Hagrid, forced to live in a shack for the rest of his life. What would he even do without his magic, without that terrifying, cracking, twisting, warm, protective ball of energy, curling inside him and around him, keeping him safe and whole, and oh shit, did he kill her? Harry didn’t know, he couldn’t see from where he stood if Aunt Marge was breathing or not, but she couldn’t be dead, could she? _Could she?_

Harry couldn’t stay here, but he didn’t have time to get the trunk from his room either, because any moment, any moment now the Ministry will come and took him away and he couldn’t allow it. But at least he had his wand tackled safely under the shirt and that was enough, that was the only thing that mattered.

He ran.

* * *

_he is dead but then the phoenix flies forward and it picks out the deadly eyes and now he’s alive again and the serpent lies on the ground, corpse rotting and blood flowing from the empty sockets and its blood mixes with the red hair on the wet floor and he runs and falls on his knees even when he knows it’s too late, he can’t save her anymore and she raises from the floor, red substance dropping from red hair and her eyes are just as red and she grips an old black diary close to her heart because a soul for a soul, a life for a life and he came too late to stop her soul from leaving and it’s not her lips that smile at him, not her voice that ask, didn’t you figure it out already and honestly, I expected better from you, and he can feel the claws enclosing his throat once more and the monster is behind him again and it takes his arm and points at the girl with red eyes and suddenly he has a wand, a pale, yew wand and it glows green, the same green that the blind serpent coiling around and squeezing them and blending them together and he knows he has no choice, he knows he must stop the monster and he strikes and the fang stabs the diary once, twice, trice, until it screams and bleeds and is silent again and the fang is black with ink and red with blood and when he looks down he sees her body, hands still clinging to the diary, the giant hole through the book and through her chest and there is blood everywhere and he stopped the monster but who is the monster now_

* * *

“And that’s how I ended spending three weeks in the Diagon, with the Minister’s permission,” Harry cheerfully ended his tale.

For several moments, the only sound was the rattling of the train as the Hogwarts Express carried them through the rain.

“Wicked,” whistled Ron, mouth wide open. Harry stuffed the chocolate frog in there and Ron hummed appreciatively, but still somehow managed to ask, “And you run away without your things, just the wand?”

“Yeah,” winced Harry. “Not even the Cloak. And it would’ve been dead useful in a situation like this, you know? So now I always take it with me, just in case.” Harry grinned and patted the bulge in his pocket, Ron nodding in understanding.

“But what happened with your Aunt?” Hermione, ever the worrywart, was looking between the boys as if she couldn’t believe them. “The one you almost… blew up?”

“She’s fine,” Harry shrugged, reaching for sweets laying around on the seat next to him. “They said she was in perfect health, just a bit frightened. And they obliviated her too, so she won’t remember anything. I just overreacted, really.”

For some reason, it failed to calm Hermione. “But it was very dangerous, Harry! I read that accidental magic rarely happens after wizards and witches get their wands, and it was quite a serious display you described! What if this happens again? You can hurt someone!”

“It’s okay, Hermione, really,” Harry rolled his eyes and took another bean from Bertie Bott’s. “They looked me over and said I was just exhausted and this is why my magic reacted that way. Bad sleep and all that. Nothing serious.”

“Oh, I know how this is,” commented Ron half-absently, looking over the chocolate frog card. “Fred and George were always more restless when they didn’t get a good night sleep. More weird things were happening around them.”

“See?” waved Harry at his best friend ever, while he discreetly spat out the godawful bean and hid it in one of candy wrapper lying around. “I’m fine, nothing to worry about.”

“Did you at least rest since then?” kept pestering the bushyhead. “Exhaustion is a serious thing, Harry, you can’t treat it lightly.”

“‘Mione, come on! He had three weeks in the Diagon, of course he got enough sleep,” snorted Ron, carefully picking only a few selected beans from the package. Harry guessed it came with growing in the wizarding world, to know which ones to take if you want to avoid the most awful ones.

Harry just nodded, agreeing with the redhead but too engaged into picking good beans alongside Ron — it was never too late to learn such essential skills — and Hermione signed, realising she won’t get any further with this. And Ron was right, Harry did have three weeks in the magical ally. And as it was nearly impossible to detect underage magic there, Harry had enough time to practise the glamour spell to hide the bags under his eyes. It’s not like he didn’t get some sleep too, of course, and he honestly didn’t feel as tired as he was a month prior. It’s just, Harry really didn’t know what to do with the fact that he kept waking up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep.

The train ride continued, with Harry exciting about how awesome it was to live in Diagon for almost a month, Ron telling them everything about Weasleys’ trip to Egypt, and Hermione constantly reminding them to be quiet even if the Professor sleeping in the compartment with them never stirred. They even talked a little about that Sirius Black fellow who escaped from Azkaban. It didn’t seem all that important, but Arthur warned Harry against him for some reason, so of course Harry shared it with his friends. They figured Black probably wanted to kill Harry or whatever, but who didn’t? Well, a lot of people didn’t, actually, as Ron and Hermione pointed out, but that wasn’t the point. Anyway, Hermione was predictably fascinated that Black managed to escape at all and she was set on spending several nights (‘more like weeks or even months’, silently agreed Ron and Harry) in Library to research it, as if she could figure out how Black did it when all the Aurors and generations of prisoners couldn’t (‘she probably could’, just as silently contemplated the boys). 

They almost finished the sweets Harry bought from the trolley when the train suddenly stopped.

“Great,” said Ron, immediately getting up. “I’m starving. Let’s go to the feast and —”

“We can’t be there yet,” frowned Hermione, checking her watch.

The lights went out and they were plunged into total darkness, the cheerful atmosphere flying through the window and disintegrating in the heavy rain outside. The compartment began to freeze and Harry tensed, afraid he once again lost control over his exhausted magic, but the characteristic ambient noise he came to associate with it was nowhere to be heard. It was undoubtedly relieving it wasn’t him causing yet another freakish accident over the whole train — but then, what was it?

“Everyone quiet,” someone said in a hoarse voice and Harry almost jumped, forgetting there was a Professor with them. In the next moment, the warm shimmering light filled the compartment, illuminating Professor Lupin’s tired face with the most alert and focused eyes Harry ever saw. All of a sudden it didn’t seem all that unfortunate that the only free compartment the Trio could find was with that man in it. Harry felt himself relax a little even if the flames dancing around warded off the cold and crippling unease only for a few seconds.

“Professor!” exclaimed Hermione, calming significantly when she saw an adult with them.

“Stay where you are,” the man slowly got on his feet, a handful of fire in one hand and a wand steadily pointing towards the door in another. He looked over the tensed children and added with a slight smile, “Whatever it is, it can’t be very dangerous. But one can never be too careful, of course.”

Suddenly Harry heard the subtle noise, just silent enough not to be noticed by anyone but him, and even Harry probably would have ignored it if he wasn’t listening carefully, attentive to any telltale noise he might hear around him. But it was wrong this time. Wrong, unnatural, not the cracking buzz of his magic Harry was slowly getting used to but — 

The door quietly slid open before Professor could reach it. And as if a switch was turned, it was all Harry could hear.

The screams.

The maddening, terrified, pleading screams. Of someone running away for their life, of someone dissolving into blinding lights — so pointless, so inevitable, for there was no way to run and no way to survive, and the only thing left was to scream in pain and desperation before the face of death, before you fall, _fall, fall into the dark and disappear and it’s all finished, it’s all done, please, please, take me, not him, there is no meaning, nothing, no, wait, I’m sorry, you can’t fix it, fix me, can’t, you’re alone, always alone, there is only death and screams and screams and screams and —_

“Harry! Harry! Are you all right?”

Someone was slapping him in the face. 

“W-what?”

The lights were back on and the train was moving again. Ron and Hermione were kneeling next to him, while Professor Lupin stood nearby, breaking an enormous chocolate bar into pieces.

“It was a dementor,” Professor explained when Harry was manoeuvred from the floor back to his seat and everyone was given the chocolate. “One of the guards of Azkaban. I will teach about them in our classes, but for now, eat the chocolate, it will help.” And he slipped through the door to check upon other students, more chocolate in his hands.

Some more explanations from his friends later, Harry more or less grasped on what actually happened. Apparently, Harry fainted like a little girl (Hermione smacked him over the head for this comment, he didn’t quite get why), and if that wasn’t bad enough, he also missed all the excitement when Professor Lupin summoned a silvery wolf to scare off the dementor. So not only he was a girl (again! Merlin, what was wrong with Hermione?), he was also a missing-out gir— erm, boy.

“I read about them, after Black broke out,” Hermione patted Harry over his hurt head, feeding him her chocolate. “Dementors suck positive thoughts and feelings, and after the long exposure, they drive wizards and witches to relive their worst memories. Maybe it was what happened?”

Harry grumpily chewed the chocolate. “Long exposure? It was the first time I met the bloody thing! And I didn’t even see it.”

That earned him one more smack. “Language!” 

Ron looked sadly at his half-eaten piece of chocolate before holding it out for Harry. “Did you relive any memory though?”

The chocolate was gladly accepted. If this wasn’t friendship, Harry didn’t know what it was. “I heard some screams,” he admitted reluctantly. 

“What screams?”

“A woman.” And a boy, but the boy didn’t matter. “She was pleading for her life — no, not for her, for someone else’s — but I don’t remember anything like this. Must be some nightmare I had.” Merlin knows, Harry had a lot in the last months, no wonder he can’t remember any specifics.

Harry wasn’t sure where all the chocolate went in his admittedly smaller than average body — and the sweets, can’t forget the sweets he bought before — but all too soon it was gone, and the train was finally approaching Hogwarts.

In was freezing at the platform, the rain continuing to pour down in icy sheets. The cacophony of sounds as people scrambled to get outside was strangely soothing and Harry for a moment lost himself between hooting owls and occasional croaking toads. Gigantic outline of Hagrid beckoned the terrified-looking first-years for their traditional journey across the lake, and Harry realised with a start that it’d be the first time he had to travel from the platform to the castle in the same way all students from second to seventh years do. After all, last time he got to Hogwarts by a flying car and while Harry hoped that Ron and he would repeat it one day, it still was interesting to find out how one was actually supposed to do it.

That was, until they reached the carriages.

“Erm... What’s this?” Harry faltered, lagging behind the rest of the students.

Ron and Hermione stopped too, looking back at him confusingly. “That’s the stagecoaches, Harry,” answered Hermione with a frown.

“No, I got that!” Was she taking him for an idiot? Harry waved towards creatures in front of the carriages. “I’m talking about these!”

Now it was Ron’s turn to frown, “There is nothing else, mate. Come on, it’s freezing, let’s go.”

Harry slowly continued forwards, throwing worried glances at the... horses? It looked kinda like a horse. Maybe. Probably. “Well, excuse me that I’m not used to having transparent winged skeletal horses around. My bad.”

This time, it was Ron and Hermione who froze on the spot. They looked at the creatures for a couple of seconds, but when they turned back to Harry, instead of appearing understanding, they were seriously alarmed.

“Erm, what horses?”

“Harry, are you sure you’re all right? 

Oh.

Harry looked at the horses again. Was he seeing things now? They indeed didn’t look very real, if he was honest with himself, what’s with how they were flickering a little as if wavering on the edge of non-existence. It was even harder to tell because of the rain — it was forming such a heavy curtain it was difficult to see if the water was flowing right through the creatures’ skeletal spines or just gently flowing around them.

“Nevermind,” mumbled Harry, finally getting to the carriage along with his friends. “Must be tired.”

Ron and Hermione murmured something in reply, looking at him sideways as though frightened he might collapse again. But before Harry could get in with them, the voice from behind got their attention.

“These are thestrals,” the upper-year in Hufflepuff’s yellow robes with a prefect badge on them approached their carriage. He looked towards the creatures and with a sad smile explained, “They are invisible for those who didn’t see death. An excellent defensive mechanism, because most animals can’t even grasp the concept.” The prefect helped bewildered Harry to get in the carriage and closed the door behind. “Don’t worry, you’re not going mad. Thestrals have always pulled the carriages in Hogwarts, it’s just that most students can’t see them.” 

The moment doors closed, the carriage set off, horses — thestrals, apparently — leaving faint sounds of splashes behind them.

Hermione was first to break an awkward silence. “I’m so sorry, Harry. I read about thestrals in _‘Hogwarts, a History’_ , I should have realised but —”

“It’s fine, ‘Mione,” Harry stopped her, trying very hard not to look in the window. It was fruitless, but at least the rain blocked most of the view.

There was silence again until Ron finally voiced the question he obviously wanted to ask since the Hufflepuff’s prefect came, “Hey, who’s death you saw?” 

Harry pretended he didn’t hear, watching as the thestrals pulling their carriage flickered from existence once more. Why were they doing that?

“Ron!” Hermione reprimanded him. “You can’t just ask that!”

“Why not?”

“It’s rude,” huffed the bushyhead. “Harry already doesn’t feel well, and you should not bother him with insensitive questions right now.”

“Oh,” Ron looked thoughtful for a moment, before turning to Harry. “Sorry, mate.”

Harry shrugged. The carriage went through the pair of magnificent iron gates leading to Hogwarts grounds when a feeling of sickening unease washed over him again. Following the sensation, Harry finally saw the dementors. They looked, frankly, quite unassuming, just the dark hoodied figures calmly floating in the air near the gates. But the vague screaming was radiating from them all the same, and for some reason it made thestrals look more solid than they were ever before. 

Harry tried not to think.

“And besides,” continued Hermione quietly, worriedly eyeing the dementors outside. “It’s obvious who’s death it was.”

“Is it?” Ron turned from the window, surprise evident in his voice. Harry, too, was looking at her with suspicion.

“Honestly, Ron,” Hermione rolled her eyes. “Don’t you remember? Professor Quirrell died that night when Harry went to protect the Philosopher Stone from You-Know-Who.”

“But it was two years ago, why —? Oh.” Ron paused as realisation washed over him. “Oh, right. We didn’t take the carriages last years.”

“Exactly.” Hermione then turned back to Harry who was forgotten for the best part of the discussion. “Sorry, Harry.”

He shrugged it off. “It’s fine, really.”

Quirrell, hah. Indeed, hadn’t Dumbledore told Harry he died when Voldemort left his body or whatever? He never really thought about it, but now that Hermione pointed it out, it made perfect sense, didn’t it? If Quirrell died before Harry passed out back then, it’d explain why he was seeing thestrals now.

Though when Harry looked in the window again, thestrals were nowhere to be found, the carriages seemingly moving forward on their own.

Harry decided it was better this way.

* * *

_he is the monster now and he doesn’t know is it his eyes that are red or is it the shards from the mirror that are soacked in blood and when he raises his head he sees his friends and they look with horror in their eyes at the blood on his arms and they turn and run and disappear and he rushes to follow but the claws around his troat hold him still and he can’t move, can’t take apart himself from the monster in the reflection of the shards and isn’t that right, isn’t it how it must be, for they are so alike, so similar, or why else would they be bound for life, for soul but no, it can’t be right, it can’t be, he refuses, he doesn’t want this and he turns around and he pushes the monster away but he doesn’t see it for there is only his parents standing there in the pool of blood and they don’t smile anymore, they don’t love him anymore, he is everything they fought against and they close their eyes and they turn away and they’re leaving, leaving, leaving and he runs but he can’t reach them and the monster in the reflection laughs and it’s a cold laugh, a cold, familiar laugh, the one that freezes him to the very bones and demands him to stop but he runs anyway, runs through the chamber and through the halls but everyone turns away and whispers to his back, another dark lord, will do great things but terrible, and the wand in his hand is white and black, yew and holly and this is in his blood, in his magic, in his soul and he can’t run away because no one will hide him but if he stops the monster will win and so he runs_

* * *

“Can anyone tell me what a boggart is?”

Hermione’s hand shot in the air. “It’s a shape-shifter, Professor. It can take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most.”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” smiled Professor Lupin, slowly walking around the classroom. “There is a crucial part of this definition, however, that makes boggarts simultaneously harder and easier to deal with. Have anyone spot it?” When no one, even Hermione, raised their hand, he continued. “In the textbook, you will find that the moment a boggart leaves its hiding spot, it immediately becomes whatever each of us most fears. Alas, it is not quite correct. Why?”

Surprisingly, it was Neville who hesitantly started. “Er — The boggart may be wrong?”

Harry could feel the confusion radiating from where Hermione was standing near him, but Professor’s face lit up.

“Precisely! Very good, Neville. As Hermione here put it, the boggart takes a form of what it _thinks_ will terrify us most, but who’s to say it will get it right? After all, it has to decide quickly on what image to use, and this is a difficult skill to acquire. It makes it easier to fight off the boggart, but it also makes it harder. But why? Yes, Dean?”

“Because different boggarts can take different forms?” suggested Dean Thomas, Harry’s dormmate.

“Exactly,” nodded Professor Lupin. “One can never know for sure what form a boggart would take. It depends on what prior experience each boggart had, where it lived, what people it met. For example, there is a known case of a boggart who lived near a vampire cavern, and it always took a form of a hungry vampire to frighten an intruding wizard. Worked almost all the time!” The class laughed and Harry found himself remembering Quirrell. It would have definitely worked on the poor Professor… or not. Maybe he was faking it along with the stutter. “Similarly, during the last war in Britain, some boggarts tended to take forms of Death Eaters, the Dark Mark, or even He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named himself.” Now the class shuddered and Professor smirked. “I think you understand why it was a rather efficient strategy for a boggart.

“Now, the boggart we have here is a young one, it has almost no experience. It means we have a huge advantage over it before we begin. What could it be?”

This time, Harry tried to answer. “We can decide what our biggest fear is beforehand and the boggart will use it?”

“Yes,” confirmed Professor. “Young boggarts often use fears from the forefront of our minds. So when we know we’re going to face a boggart, it’s best to have a fear prepared. It doesn’t work all the time, and even an unexperienced boggart can be lucky enough and fetch something else from our minds, but it is definitely worth trying. 

“But it’s rare when we know in advance that we’re going to meet with a boggart. On the contrary, usually it happens completely unannounced and we don’t have any opportunity to prepare. How one deals with a boggart in a situation like this?”

Hermione, finally able to answer something from the textbook, immediately jumped in, “We must use a spell, _Riddikulus_ , and think of something funny to change boggart’s form into —”

“Ah,” softly interrupted her Professor. “This is right, but how would you know that it’s a boggart and not a real vampire ready to attack?”

Hermione faltered, sitting back uncertainly. Professor Lupin looked around the class, but no one knew what to say.

“This is another thing that makes boggarts so difficult to deal with,” continued Professor after a pause. “They adapt and blend in the surroundings they live in. Most of the time wizards don’t even realise they’ve met a boggart because it’s absolutely natural to find a vampire near a vampire cavern, or find an acromantula in a forest, or the flock of dixies in an abandoned house. And we don’t think about trying out _Riddikulus_ when it happens. So, Hermione, can you guess what do we usually do instead?”

The bushyhead shook her head, blinking furiously, “I-I don’t know, Professor.”

“Think,” Lupin smiled at her encouragingly. “Imagine that you’re in the Forbidden Forest, it’s dark, and suddenly you see a giant acromantula, with venom dripping from its stings, and it is slowly approaching you. What will you do?”

Harry saw Ron getting pale, and Hermione hiccuped, “I’ll run.”

“Yes,” softly nodded Professor. “That is what will likely happen, and that is exactly what boggart wants from you.” He turned back to look at the classroom. “It is important to understand the reason behind boggarts’ shape-shifting — they just want to scare us off, so we will leave them alone. This is their defence mechanism, but take it away and they’re harmless. All they do is produce an illusion, but they have no physical form behind it. They can’t do real harm.

“There is, however, one significant weakness in such defence. Anyone?”

Seamus Finnegan raised his hand, “Well, I won’t run away from dixies. Sir.”

“Won’t you? What will you do instead then?”

“Er — I’ll fight them off? We learnt the charm last year.” Then Seamus smirked and added, “Actually, that was the only thing we learnt from Professor Lochart.”

“Ah! And that is exactly the problem,” gravely nodded Lupin. “We either flee, or we fight. But the doxies are not really the doxies, so what will happen to the boggart?”

“The spell will go right through it?” guessed Ron. 

Lupin shook his head and chuckled. “No, that’d be too easy. Anything else? Think! Why do we need a special spell, _Riddikulus_ , to fight off a simple illusion?”

The class fell silent, until Lavander Brown finally suggested, “Perhaps, it will become worse?”

“Correct!” Lupin clapped his arms, pleased. “The boggart will use magic from the spell you cast at it to adapt its form, to appear as if the spell affected it, but not quite like you intended. For example, the doxies won’t freeze, but instead become more aggravated. And some boggarts may even go creative with it — let’s say, the acromantula was defeated, but its dying screech got the attention of its children and now you have to deal with more acromantulas, and this time they’re angry.” There was a quiet whimper from Ron and Harry patted him soothingly on the shoulder. “If you try to attack a boggart, it will usually become only scarier, until you run away. Or faint, as it also happens sometimes.”

The class weakly chuckled, and Professor continued. “So, to sum it all up, the usual encounter with a boggart happens as follows — you run away. But if you really want to go where the boggart lives, if it, for example, occupied a toilet — and yes, it may really happen! — you return and try to fight it until you run away again. It continues until you either give up and go searching for another toilet, or realise it is a boggart and use _Riddikulus_ against it.

“Now, that we covered how boggarts operate, it’s finally time to learn the spell itself. It is, fortunately, rather simple, yet it requires a force of mind. You see, the thing that really finishes a boggart is laughter. What you need to do is force it to assume a shape that you find amusing.

“We will practise the charm without wands first. Repeat after me, please… _Riddikulus!_ ”

The spell indeed was easy to learn, and soon students were hurrying to take place in the line to face a real boggart.

“Lupin is _awesome_ ,” excitingly whispered Harry while the Trio waited together in the line. “I hope he stays until our seventh year.”

“ _Professor_ Lupin, Harry. And he doesn’t go by the textbook,” Hermione muttered with a frown.

“That’s what Professors are for, ‘Mione! To teach beyond textbooks.”

Ron wasn’t paying them any attention. Instead, he was murmuring under his nose with a very concentrated expression, “Take its legs off, take its legs off…” 

Oh, yes, the fear. What did Harry fear most? He didn’t know. He doubted anyone knew their deepest fear, actually. But Lupin asked them to come up with something that they were seriously, truly afraid of, because if the fear was too weak, boggart will choose something else that they will be unprepared for. So, what Harry feared?

The image of a monster with red eyes from his dreams flashed before him, but Harry shook it off. He wasn’t afraid of Voldemort. He _hated_ him. Or, even better, he didn’t _care_ about the guy at all. Harry didn’t need a soulmate and Voldemort could go fuck himself for all he cared.

Right. ‘Language’, as Hermione would say.

Anyway, not Voldemort. What then?

How about dementors? These things made him glad Uncle Vernon didn’t sign his Hogsmeade form or else Harry would need to go near them to attend the village. The screams radiating from them whenever Harry went even remotely close to the borders creeped him out of his mind. Harry didn’t want to listen to them ever again — honestly, the dreams were more than enough. So yeah, if boggart needed something Harry would run away from without question, dementors were exactly that. 

And how to make dementors amusing… Well, that wasn’t difficult at all. They were rather plane to start with, so he can, hmm, give them bright pink cloaks? And add glitter. A lot of glitter, of all the colours. And sparkles. And make them dance. 

Harry snorted at the image in his head. Yes, that should do the trick.

The line quickly moved forward, every student announcing first what they were expecting to see and how they wanted to change it before Professor Lupin allowed them to meet with the boggart.

Just like Professor warned them, preparing a fear for the dementor didn’t always work.

They were reminded of it when it was Parvati’s turn. She said she was afraid of rats, but when Parvati stepped forward, she was faced with a large rusty cage, empty, no rats around. She screamed and made to run while the class stood there in confusion, and Professor let her. 

With Professor nearest to the boggart, it turned into a silvery orb floating in the air. “How unoriginal,” scoffed Lupin and with a quick spell showed it back into wardrobe it lived in. He approached Parvati then, who was shaking in the corner and held out a chocolate bar for her. “Here, take it. It’ll help.”

One awkward, confused minute later, Professor faced the classroom again and explained.

“Sometimes our fears are too abstract to be given a define physical form. It happens more often the older we become. When boggart chooses to act upon an abstract fear, it takes the form of whatever will make us think about it. Such illusions are deeply symbolic in their nature and usually have no meaning to anyone else, but they are no less successful in scaring the intruder off. You can take an image the boggart picked for me, as an example. I’m not afraid of a shining orb it showed, but I am afraid of what it tried — unsuccessfully this time — to allude to. 

“These illusions are harder to fight off because to do so you need to address not an image that boggart shows, but an abstract fear it represents. Though on a bright side, it’s easier to understand you’re dealing with a boggart when it takes a form of something meaningful only for you.” He turned to Parvati, who was significantly calmer now. “Ready to take another go? But remember to focus not on the cage itself, but on what it means for you.”

Parvati was not a Gryffindor for nothing. One _Riddikulus_ later, the rusty cage turned into a just as rusty chandelier, which Harry thought was rather spooky but it still made Parvati laugh and that apparently was enough. The lesson continued as before.

Ron predictably got a huge acromantula, the memory of their second year, and with a vindictive smile the redhead took its legs off.

Hermione expected some exotic venomous insect she met once but instead got a… piece of paper? Harry wasn’t sure, but it looked like homework with a lot of red ink on it. Anyway, unlike Parvati, Hermione quickly put herself together and her _Riddikulus_ folded the paper into a messy origami crane.

It was his turn now.

“What do you think it will be?” carefully asked Professor Lupin and for some reason, Harry got an impression Professor didn’t actually want to let him face the boggart.

“Dementor,” he answered confidently. “And I’ll make it pink and shiny.”

He heard the class laugh, but Professor looked uncertain. “Are you sure?”

Harry almost rolled his eyes but managed to stop himself. “Yes, sir.”

Professor hesitantly stepped away, pointing his wand at the handle of the closed wardrobe. “On the count of three then. One —”

No, really, why wouldn’t he be sure? Dementors were scary, their screams were scary — _oh, no._

“two —”

Harry was such an idiot. He wasn’t afraid of dementors, he was afraid of screams.

“three —”

Of what these screams were about.

“— _now!_ ”

The wardrobe opened and what stepped out wasn’t a dementor.

“Well, hello there,” smiled Tom. “Long time no see.”

 _Shit_.

It was just a boggart, reminded himself Harry. And a rather stupid one too, because he wasn’t afraid of T—. Riddle. Harry wasn’t afraid of Riddle.

He raised his wand, pointing it straight at Riddle’s chest. _See_ , he wanted to tell, _now I have it. You can do nothing to me_.

Pink and shiny, was it? “ _Riddikulus!_ ”

The spell did nothing but make Riddle’s hair just a bit more bright. 

“Focus on the fear an image represents, Harry, not an image itself,” softly reminded Professor. Harry barely heard him.

Riddle made a step closer. Harry couldn’t look away from his red eyes, the same red eyes that were haunting his dreams for months, same eyes he met all this time ago, eyes that changed everything and that _Tom didn’t have and if he had, if he saw them back then in the Chamber everything would be different, he would understand, he would —_

“Did you really think,” murmured Riddle, with a tilt of his head, face pale and gleaming red eyes not looking away either, “that I would just let you go, my dear —”

_No._

“ _Diffindo!_ ” stopped him Harry before he could think.

Riddle stumbled back, hands flying to his chest with a gasp.

“Do _not_ use other spells on a boggart, Harry — oh,” hurried Professor forward but stopped just behind Harry’s shoulder. “This is bad.”

Black and red, ink and blood were flowing through Riddle’s fingers as he dropped on his knees. He raised his feverish eyes to Harry and smiled, more blood dripping from his mouth.

Harry vaguely heard someone scream behind him.

“I guess it’s fair,” Riddle managed to cough out, ink turning his robes completely black and blood on the floor swiftly covering Harry’s feet. They never looked away from each other, the wand in Harry’s hand shaking, as he desperately tried to think of something funny, of a way to make _this_ amusing, reminding himself time after time that it was just a boggart, that it was not, it was not — “Who else do I deserve but another murderer?”

“ _Expecto Patronum!_ ”

Riddle disappeared, leaving a purple smoke in his stead. It was spreading away and away, escaping from a silver wolf jumping in and tearing it apart with its fangs and claws. The boggart struggled and howled, but in a few seconds, it was gone.

Professor Lupin lowered his wand. He was standing just one step away from where Riddle lied just a minute before. Silver wolf softly pawed back to him and nudged its nose against Lupin’s hand.

Harry slowly blinked himself back to awareness. There were no blood on his feet and no ink on the floor. It was just an illusion, nothing really happened, and he released a shuddering breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“That happens sometimes,” gently started Professor Lupin, with a wave of his hand sending the wolf towards children. Despite witnessing how this creature just tore a boggart apart, it didn’t look dangerous and instead brought with it the feeling of calm and light. Wolf softly bumped against Harry’s leg and moved past him. “Usually, boggart targets each wizard individually, but if it’s powerful enough — or just lucky — it can use one illusion to scare several people at once. For instance, that happened with boggarts who assumed You-Know-Who’s form during the war. It is also what happened just now.”

Harry flinched and turned around. 

His classmates were all backed away to a far wall, feets curled inside as if there was still a pool of blood on the floor and they were trying not to touch it. Hermione and Ron were looking at him with horror in their eyes.

Harry felt his heart sink.

“When it happens, boggarts become partially immune to the _Riddikulus_ spell and require more powerful charms to get rid of,” continued Professor as the wolf walked between students and they were slowly becoming relaxed within its presence. “The _Patronus Charm_ — the wolf you can see here — is one of the ways to do so. It’s an advanced spell, you won’t find it in Hogwarts curriculum, unfortunately, but it’s an incredibly handy one. It can be used to ward off most of the dark creatures. _Patronus_ can be used even against a dementor, the only spell capable of such a feat.” Professor paused and added regrettably. “For a poor boggart, it was, frankly, an overkill. And as we don’t have another one to practice against, I guess the class is dismissed for today.”

Harry was already walking away. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes and didn’t wait for his friends. He just needed _out_.

“Harry!”

“Harry, wait!”

Ignoring the shouts, Harry rounded the corner, took out the Cloak hidden in his pocket, and under the forgiving veil of invisibility, he ran.

* * *

_he runs and he doesn’t stop and he can’t stop and he will never stop but he can’t run away from himself, from the monster behind his back, from the claws clinging to his neck, from the eyes looking at him from the every reflection and he forgets his own eyes but he remembers the serpent, he remembers the light and they are green like instant death, like shadows taking his parents away but he doesn’t want this and he runs but he doesn’t know where and people around are turning away and he takes them and turns them and looks them in the eyes but the empty sockets bleed blood and the hole in the chest bleeds ink and they fall apart and dissolve into dust and he shadders away and he refuses to see and he closes his eyes and he runs but the serpent coils close and he falls through the darkness, falls through the shards piercing his arms and dark figures come from the shadows and they look at him with empty eyes and they call him a monster and he tries to explain that he didn’t have a choice, that he didn’t know, that he wanted it back but he can’t hear his voice and they say they can’t help and they say he can’t be saved and if so then does he even deserve to live and he tries to escape and he tries to run again but the ghosty arms take his head, take his neck, take his spine and he sees the phoneix and it flies and it cries and it pecks out his eyes and the sword dripping with venom strikes trough his chest and then there is only fire and everything is burning and he stands among the ash alone_

* * *

“Your father, too, liked to run away under this very invisibility cloak.”

Harry jumped up, putting off the hood of the Cloak and turning to look at the Headmaster. “Professor! I—”

Headmaster Dumbledore carelessly waved his hand, as if to tell him to sit back, and sat too on the same log on the Black Lake’s shore. “Though your father, of course, used it to spread mischief and not to hide away on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Interesting how children are so similar to their parents and yet so different, don’t you think?”

“Erm,” uncertainly mumbled Harry, sitting back awkwardly, inches away from the Headmaster. “I guess?...”

Dumbledore hummed. “Your friends are worried. Are —”

“I’m _fine_ ,” snapped Harry but then caught himself. “Sorry, sir.”

But Professor didn’t look offended. “Ah, but of course. There is something special about sitting alone by the water. I am most sorry I had to interrupt, my boy, but alas, as a Headmaster, I must ensure every student is in their dorms by curfew.”

“Oh.” Harry looked at the sky. It was dark, and only some rare clouds were enlightened by the setting sun. It was probably well after curfew by this point.

He didn’t get up, though, and the longer Headmaster Dumbledore continued to just sit there, doing nothing but watching the last specs of light leaving the sky, the more relaxed Harry became. He shifted into a more comfortable position and looked sideways.

Thestrals were still there. They came from the Forest some time ago to rest and drink by the water, and stayed there since then. Harry wasn’t sure if they knew he could see them. They kept throwing cautious glances towards him time after time but nevertheless didn’t leave. 

They were not transparent anymore. If the last time thestrals kept wavering between being visible or not, now Harry could clearly see their velvet skin, gleaming lightly in the dusk and giving them ghost-like appearance, their entirely white eyes without any hint of slits in them, their bat-like wings spreading slowly behind their back. Thestrals were, in their own right, quite beautiful, mesmerising even, and entirely fitting for what they represented — the witnessing of death.

But for all their otherwordly beauty, Harry couldn’t stop thinking about the reason he could see them in the first place.

“Wonderful creatures, aren’t they?” Dumbledore suddenly said after a couple of silent minutes. Harry didn’t look. “How they show us that for all death is terrible and takes our loved ones from us, there is still something new to be found in it.”

Harry didn’t find it wonderful. He’d prefer there didn’t exist a special kind of creatures specifically made to remind him of what he’d done.

“I killed him,” words left Harry unbidden. When seconds passed and Headmaster had yet to say something, Harry finally turned to him. “I killed Tom, and now I — I —”

He went silent again. Harry didn’t know what he expected from Dumbledore, but he just couldn’t keep it in himself anymore. If he’d be sent to Azkaban for that, then so be it. He deserved it anyway.

“I doubt you can kill something that wasn’t alive,” carefully said Headmaster, blue eyes observing Harry attentively.

“But he was!” cried Harry. “He had feelings, he — he had plans, and goals, he could even joke and, and —” _and he was sorry for what he’d done_ , Harry didn’t say, blinking away tears threatening to fall. “Why wouldn’t be Tom alive? He was, he wanted to live and — and I killed him.”

Looking down at his shaking hands, Harry added in a broken whisper. “Now I’m just as much of a monster as he is.”

“My boy,” Dumbledore carefully took Harry’s hands in his, wrinkled skin strangely soothing. “You’re not a monster.”

“But —”

“And Tom Riddle is not a monster either.”

“But Myrtle! And Hagrid!” Harry argues desperately. “He released a bloody basilisk on children, of course he’s a monster!”

“Tom Riddle did many terrible things,” Headmaster agreed sadly. “Even at sixteen, there was already darkness in him, and it only grew the older he became. And yet, he was a human. He still is, no matter the name he goes by.”

“He doesn’t deserve to be called a human,” whispered Harry.

“No one deserves to be called a monster,” softly argued Headmaster Dumbledore. “We must always remember, Harry, that whatever mistakes, whatever terrible decisions people make, they’re still people. There is always hope for them, however far they’ve gone. They still deserve to be cared for.”

Harry shook his head stubbornly, “I don’t want to care for him.”

“And yet, you allow a shade of him the rights of life.”

Harry heard himself whimper. Dumbledore softly rubbed his hands and continued, not caring that Harry still had to look up.

“There is nothing wrong with caring for him. Tom Riddle, after all, was an ingenious person. He was smart, intelligent, and resourceful. If he’d only channelled his talents in the right direction then who knows, perhaps the world would be a much better place now.”

“But if Tom deserved a chance,” Harry hesitantly raised his head to look in the sad blue eyes. “Then why you sent me weapons?”

“Weapons?”

“Fawkes and the Hat.”

“Ah, I see,” Dumbledore nodded understandably. “I didn’t send you anything, Harry, for I can hardly control what Fawkes does. But if I may, why you see them as weapons? Didn’t they serve as protection instead, helping you to survive the basilisk?”

Harry didn’t know how to answer.

Headmaster Dumbledore was right, wasn’t he? Harry wouldn’t be here now if Fawkes didn’t come to his help.

“So if Tom came… Would you have helped him?”

Headmaster hummed thoughtfully. Harry gave it to him, he didn’t answer immediately, choosing to think first, but it didn’t take him long anyway.

And Harry could already see the answer in his eyes.

“I admire how you see that diary as a living being, Harry,” Dumbledore gravely started. “But I can’t agree with you on that. The diary was just a splinter of Tom Riddle, a memory if you will. And what Tom had to do to create it… My boy, that was the darkest, vilest magic I know, and the diary was inevitably tainted by it. I doubt it was possible at all to help it.”

Harry smiled faintly. “That’s what he said. That you’d never help him.”

“Would you?”

Harry almost laughed.

Would he? He nearly _did_. He was ready to frame Lochart for petrifications and get Tom out of the picture. If Tom just didn’t attempt to kill him, if he didn’t _lie_ then _—_

But Tom did.

Harry shook his head. “What does it matter anyway? I already killed him.” Then a thought occurred to him and this time he did laugh, even if it went out rather self-despicable. “It’s just like he said. There are strange likenesses between us. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by muggles… both murderers.”

Harry would have loved not to remember the exact words Tom used. 

“Ah, but that is not the similarities that truly matter, my boy,” Headmaster smiled, blue eyes twinkling. “But the differences.”

“Maybe we’re not that different either,” Harry shrugged, kicking some stone under his foot. They were soulmates, after all, however much Harry wished they weren’t. 

“But you are. Take your sorting, for example. Gryffindor and Slytherin are quite different, don’t you think?”

“Well, the Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin,” grumbled Harry. “And I can speak parseltongue, so it’d made sense, wouldn’t it?”

“You can speak parseltongue, Harry,” said Dumbledore calmly, “because Lord Voldemort — who is the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin — can speak parseltongue. Unless I’m much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I’m sure...”

“Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?” Harry said, shocked. 

“It certainly seems so,” Headmaster sadly nodded, and for a moment, a deeply troubled expression passed his face, but it was gone just as quickly as it appeared.

Huh. And Harry thought it was because he and Voldemort were soulmates. 

“Doesn’t it make us only more similar?”

“Perhaps. And yet, you’re still in Gryffindor.”

“Just because I asked the Hat to put me there.”

“Exactly!” beamed Dumbledore. “You asked, and Tom Riddle didn’t. That’s what makes you different from him, my boy, and it’s your choices. In similar circumstances, you chose differently, and it’s matters much more than that you both were orphans.”

“But it’s not only that!” argued Harry. “We also both killed, and not all orphans do so.”

“Yet once again, you did it for different reasons,” Headmaster seriously said, and Harry looked at him in confusion. “Where Tom Riddle killed from a misplaced sense of justice and to make a point, to prove himself as the Heir of Slytherin, you, my dear boy, destroyed the diary to protect others, to save Miss Weasley and countless more.”

“It’s still murder,” weakly retorted Harry.

“If you want to call it so,” allowed Dumbledore. “But sometimes, this is the only way to stop worse things from happening. In the Chamber, I’m afraid, it was either the diary or Miss Weasley. I think you made the right choice.”

He did, didn’t he? Harry sighed. “For the greater good.”

Dumbledore hummed. “Yes, but I would advise against using this phrase too much. Too often it’s used to justify all kinds of means, to make one forget that others are still humans and not some unspeakable monsters. It happened before and… it didn’t end well.”

There was a sad smile on Dumbledore’s face and his eyes were looking somewhere in the distance as if seeing something that no one else could. 

“You still did what was right.”

Harry opened his mouth to answer, but a sudden yawn stopped the words. Headmaster chuckled.

“Perhaps it’s time to go back? I believe this place will be just as beautiful in the daylight as it is under the stars. Though I fear thestrals may stop coming here if they see you there too often. Ah, nothing is ever too perfect, is it?”

Headmaster Dumbledore carefully stood and Harry immediately felt bad that he kept the old man so long with his mental breakdown or whatever.

“I’m sorry I run away, sir, I shouldn’t have —”

“We all need time for ourselves, my boy,” softly interrupted him Dumbledore. 

They went towards the castle.

* * *

_he stands before the mirror and he sees only himself there and nothing is lurking in the shadows and his arms are red with blood but his eyes are still green and he’s alone,_

_alone_

_and_

_nothing_

_is_

_happening_

_It’s better this way._

For the first time in months, Harry slept in deep in the morning.

* * *

At breakfast, everyone stared.

Harry sat on his usual spot between his friends and pretended he couldn’t hear the whispers all around the Great Hall, the rumours about how his boggart called him a murderer and how his first instinct was to fire a cutting spell at it.

Ron and Hermione took him aside this morning and said he could always come to them and share everything. Fighting away tears while trapped between two fierce hugs, Harry nodded but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to anymore.

Yes, Harry was a murderer. But he did what had to be done and he loved his quick instincts, thank you very much.

“Harry.”

He looked up from his plate to find Ginny, standing by the opposite side of the table with an extremely determined expression on her face.

“Um, yes?” Harry asked hesitantly. She had warm hazel eyes, he noticed half-absently. Not a hint of red.

The girl took a deep breath in, as if gathering all the strength she could master. Harry patiently waited.

“He was a bitch!” she finally exclaimed in one quick breath.

Harry blinked. What?...

“Ginny!” gasped Ron nearby. “You can’t use such language!”

But then Harry got it.

And he laughed.

He couldn’t remember when he laughed like this last time, with tears in the eyes and until his stomach hurt, but he couldn’t stop even if he tried.

“Yeah,” Harry finally managed to answer back. “He was a bitch. He was such a bitch!”

“ _Harry!_ ” gasped Ron twice as indignant. “Don’t talk like this to my sister!” 

Ginny seriously nodded and walked away.

Harry kept laughing, ignoring worried looks from his friends.

In the end, he didn’t regret anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is gonna be a couple more chapters for the third year, and I'll try to make them shorter. But I have some interesting ideas for Sirius, so... can't really promise anything, I guess. My muse is rather vicious sometimes. 
> 
> Anyway, I would like to hear your thoughts on this chapter! I know it's a mess, but I really wanted to cover how Harry deals with what was basically a murder at the end of the previous chapter. And I always found it strange that while Quirrell death is discussed pretty often in fandom, the significance of the Diary destruction is usually overlooked. So yeah, I guess I wanted to change it.  
> And the dreams. They're so weird. But my muse threatened to kill itself if I delete them, so you understand I didn't have a choice.  
> Also, sorry for what is basically a 1k words long description of my headcanon for boggarts. My hands slipped, you know. (actually, they slipped for the duration of this whole chapter, but nevermind)


	5. They deserved it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape is prejudged against werewolves as per usual, Harry is a cruel little shit, Ron is a good minion, and Sirius is more than just a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My muse was kicking and screaming, but I did force it to write this chapter. Somehow I even somewhat like the result. Hope you'll like it to.
> 
> Betaed by [ChibiPenguin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiPenguin).

Unfortunately, Harry’s awareness of why exactly he was so afraid of dementors didn’t make the situation with them any less difficult. And it was made painfully clear to him at the last Quidditch match, where Harry lost his faithful broom because of the dementors' attack. Well, Harry also happened to fall from fifty-something feet in the air, but that wasn’t the problem. There were dozens of wizards nearby that would — and did — catch him, but none of them cared for _his broom_ , and look where it got him — the Whomping Willow ate his Nimbus and now he was broomless and depressed.

One thing was clear. Harry needed to deal with his dementor problem, and soon, or he risked another innocent broom to die because of him. That is, if anyone would even trust him with a new one.

So you see, Harry wanted to ask Professor Lupin if the man could teach him the Patronus Charm. And he was therefore extremely disappointed when he hadn’t gotten a chance to do so.

“Turn to page 394.”

Snape was already a terrible teacher, but he became twice as terrible when he was teaching two classes instead of one. Harry dearly hoped it was just a temporal substitution, and not just because he needed Lupin to teach him the spell against dementors.

“It is a common misconception that werewolves are only dangerous while in their wolf form, when in fact they often bring significantly more damage by disguising as humans.”

And as if he wasn't horrible enough already, Snape intentionally chose a topic they shouldn’t be learning until the end of the year, despite what they had told him. Clearly the man just wanted to have an excuse to take some more points from them.

“Sometimes it is naively believed that lycanthropy is a mere infection, a disease. It is not. Perhaps the most convincing proof that their very beings become irrevocably rotten, is that never, in all wizarding history, has a werewolf found its soulmate.”

Oh, that one was interesting. Werewolves had no soulmates? But what if the person already had a soulmate? Would they lose them, if they became a werewolf? Harry was ready to offer himself as an experiment subject if no one knew an answer yet.

“While transformed, a werewolf experiences a total loss of moral sense, and that does not leave its so-called human mind unaffected. The more transformations a werewolf experiences, the further its mind deteriorates until all concepts of right and wrong are lost permanently.”

Though, how would it even work? Can a pair stop being soulmates? Was there some kind of a bond that could be broken? If so, then what would it mean for a person? They’d stop being ‘a perfect match’ for each other? Wouldn’t it require a significant change of their character? Wait, no. Soulmates were not really about personalities, or Voldemort and Harry wouldn’t be ones, _obviously._

“Even it’s human form undergoes changes with time, borrowing more and more aspects from its wolf form. It becomes an abomination, a mix of a human and a wolf, an uncontrollable vile beast with human intelligence. It is what allowed werewolves to become one of the most formidable forces under the Dark Lord’s rule during the last war.”

But anyway, were there some special features to a soulmate connection or not? Harry was ashamed to confess that he didn’t know. On the one hand, Ron never told him about something like this, as well as anyone else. But on the other hand, it’s not like there were a lot of soulmate pairs at Hogwarts. In fact, Harry only knew about Weasley twins, and maybe Patil twins too, but he wasn’t sure about that one. So it’s not like people were talking about soulmates much anyway.

“Mr. Potter, as arrogant as ever, I see. Confident in his ability to defeat a werewolf. By falling at it from a broom, perhaps?”

Harry jerked his head up. When had Snape even gotten here? “What? No, I —”

“Then why are you not taking notes, Potter? Twenty points from Gryffindor.”

The class groaned, shooting him nasty looks. _What an asshole_ , thought Harry, looking the man in the eyes.

“And detention,” added Snape with narrowed eyes. “For disrespect.”

“Yes, _sir,_ ” gritted Harry through his teeth.

Snape continued on his lecture, and Harry dutifully bent over his notes to avoid even bigger loss of the house points, wincing in a sudden headache.

* * *

Lupin reappeared a couple of days later, and, to Snape’s credit, he indeed looked quite ill, and even his usually alert eyes became much duller. He agreed to teach Harry a Patronus Charm, but only after Christmas, as the Professor didn’t have time before it. That was better than nothing, and Harry could wait. Of course, he’d prefer to start now, but looking into those tired eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to insist on it.

Before leaving, Harry decided to ask, if the man knew, what happened to people with soulmates if they were turned into werewolves. Surprisingly, Lupin didn’t even hesitate before answering.

“They die,” he simply said. “People who have found their soulmate can’t be turned into werewolves. They never survive the bite.”

For some reason, it didn’t sound quite as sad as one might expect.

* * *

Third year on and Harry was still undecided as to whom he disliked most — Snape or Malfoy. Right at the moment, though, it was clearly the latter. Pointy blonde annoyed him to no end with his whining about an ‘injury’ he got from the hippogriff. To Harry, who had scars from basilisk’s fangs on both of his arms, it sounded extremely lame, and he was itching to show Malfoy what a _real_ injury looked like.

Especially after the Trio found out about the trial for Buckbeak.

“You’ll burn a hole in his head if you continue staring, mate,” whispered Ron, discreetly poking him with an elbow. “Better check on our potion instead.”

Harry threw a glance to their cauldron. The potion was just fine, maybe a little bit thicker than it should be, but it wouldn’t affect the next steps. It didn’t require anything for a couple more minutes.

He looked at Malfoy again. “Interesting idea,” he mused, standing a bit on his toes to check on which stage the Slytherin’s potion was on. 

Hm. It could work.

“What are you doing?” asked Ron in confusion, watching him cut the ingredients again. “I thought we didn’t need more of those?”

“ _We_ don’t,” agreed Harry, adding a bit of dandelion root in the mix. There, this looked just about right.

“Huh?” Ron’s eyes widened as he too shot a look towards Malfoy. “Are you going to?...”

“Yeap,” Harry gathered the prepared ingredients in his left hand.

Ron looked at him in concealed awe. “What will it do?”

“Burn a hole in his head,” Harry shrugged, pulling his wand out of the sleeve. He looked around. Good, Snape was properly distracted with Nevill.

“ _What?_ But —” redhead started to sound a little bit alarmed now, but Harry hushed him.

“It’s not too dangerous,” he calmed Ron down and quietly cast a levitation spell on the ingredients in his hand. “Quick, distract him!”

Ron closed his mouth — what a good friend he was — and crumpled a piece of parchment. Soon it was flying towards Malfoy, hitting him in the shoulder. The boy turned around and it was all Harry needed to drop new ingredients in his cauldron.

Malfoy didn’t notice a thing.

“Now what?” quietly asked Ron.

“Now we wait,” Harry grinned.

It didn’t take long.

Malfoy made a single distressed sound, but he didn’t have time to move away before the pillar of angry red fire shot from his cauldron.

And right into his face.

The class immediately erupted into chaos. Malfoy screamed and stumbled back, flipping the table behind him and sending the cauldron on it flying. His face was completely covered by flames and his hair formed a beautiful flaming halo around his head as he was helplessly trying to pat the fire out with bare hands.

But unfortunately, it ended almost as quickly as it started. After just a few seconds of gorgeous chaos Snape was already pointing his wand at Malfoy and sending a series of what must be healing and cooling spells. The Professor rushed to Malfoy’s side to examine him, and Harry couldn’t see the Slytherin from where he was standing, but he could hear Malfoy’s laboured breathing, still frightened from the fire.

“I thought you said it wasn’t dangerous,” weakly whispered Ron, watching as Crabbe and Goyle led the bald and red-faced Malfoy to a Hospital Wing.

Well, actually he said that it wasn’t _too_ dangerous, which is a big difference, mind you! And it’s not like he was wrong — Malfoy was mostly fine in the end, there was not a single burn mark on his face thanks to Snape’s healing. So what if he was bald now? Madam Pomfrey probably could fix it in a single potion.

But Harry didn’t tell Ron any of these things. In fact, he barely refrained from stomping on his feet and _hard_. Because really, couldn’t Ron choose a better time to —

“ _Potter,_ ” Snape’s head snapped into his direction the moment the words left redhead’s mouth. “How unsurprising that it was you once again who so foolishly endangered another student’s life.”

“I did nothing, sir,” calmly replied Harry, unashamedly looking straight at the Professor. 

“Don’t _lie_ to me, Potter! Your senseless little prank could have cost someone’s _life_.”

“But it didn’t,” Harry quietly added. He specifically made sure it wouldn’t happen by adding that extra bit of dandelion root, so in his opinion it was all pretty safe.

Students around him started whispering after he as good as confessed in organising the incident with Malfoy. Harry was rather curious would it improve his overall reputation or not. It was a Slytherin he attacked, after all, and Gryffindors usually liked that. But maybe it was a bit too cruel. He wasn’t sure.

“You are just like your father,” Snape slowly punctuated every biting word. “Insolent fool, arrogantly believing that it is always possible to get away with everything just because of your fame and status.”

Harry smiled.

“Thank you, sir,” he quite honestly replied. Really, Snape always managed to make Harry feel a bit closer to his dad that he never knew. In such moments, Harry didn’t even hate him that much.

“Silence!” snapped Snape. “Most unfortunately, you are not in my House and the decision to expel you does not rest with me. But this ‘accident’ will be reported to people with that happy power.”

Harry barely contained a snort. He would love to see Snape try, actually. Because with Sirius Black running around intending to kill him, Harry seriously doubted he would be allowed anywhere away from Hogwarts. Even the Minister ignored how Harry almost killed his aunt, for Merlin’s sake, and Snape really wanted him to believe some silly little burn that was almost immediately healed will make a difference? And it’s not like the man had any evidence.

“Fifty points from Gryffindor,” spat Snape, doing the only thing he could. “And detentions for two weeks.”

Done with Harry, Snape returned his attention to the rest of the class, and it soon turned out that almost everyone’s potion was wasted. The whole ordeal with Draco was understandably distracting and they missed the time for the next step in preparation. To his great displeasure, Snape was effectively forced to dismiss the class, but not before he assigned them with a ten foot long essay.

Harry was surrounded the moment they stepped from the classroom.

“How have you done it?” excitedly asked Seamus with a notebook in hand, where he wrote the specifics of every single time he blew something up.

Cool, so Harry was right that it indeed improved his reputation among Gryffindors.

“I haven’t done anything,” he sang playfully, waving away the questions. Sure, he was pretty confident that he wouldn’t be expelled or suspended for all of this. But it was still unwise to openly confess in being the real perpetrator even if everyone already suspected it to be the case.

Slytherins, on the opposite, were predictably _not amused_ with Harry and were throwing him nasty looks, but it was nothing new. And Harry found he was actually looking forward to unprovoked attacks in the corridors so he could blow off some steam using them as an excuse.

“ _Harry_.”

Oops. And now came real troubles.

Hermione grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the crowd. Ron, who had yet to say a single word since they left the Potion classroom, followed suit.

“Have you really blown up Malfoy’s cauldron, Harry?” the bushyhead demanded when they were sufficiently away from any stray ear.

Harry wanted to lie, really. But Ron knew the truth, and even if the redhead wouldn’t give him away — maybe — it was still bad to be seen outright lying to his friends by other friends. So Harry didn’t actually have a choice.

“That wasn’t really dangerous,” he tried.

Smack! His head rolled to the side from the impact of the slap.

“I can’t believe you, Harry!” cried Hermione. “That was so reckless, you could have seriously harmed him, and you’re treating it like it was nothing! —”

“I knew what I was doing,” Harry tried to calm her. “There was no way his cauldron would explode. And he was healed, you saw it, he will be _fine_.”

It didn’t work. “How could you be so sure! Experimenting with potions is dangerous, Harry, you could have miscalculated somewhere and —”

“That was a trivial reaction!” argued Harry, slowly losing his patience. “It was like adding salt to the soup and expecting it to become salty! Nothing could have gone wrong!”

“Trivial? We never learnt these things, Harry, and —”

“I don’t need a Professor to tell me that salt is salty!”

“It’s not that easy —!”

Ron meekly tried to interfere, “Malfoy kinda deserved it though.”

Harry threw Ron a grateful look. It was nice to know someone was on his side. 

Before Hermione could reply to this outrageous statement, Ron continued, “And it’s a bit like what happened with Hagrid, right? Buckbeak ‘attacked’ Malfoy, but it’s somehow Hagrid’s fault that he didn’t protect him. So it’s Snape’s fault that he doesn’t protect students from potion accidents. Like, come on, Seamus blows his cauldron every second lesson, and Snape does nothing! And Malfoy throws things in Harry’s and mine potions all the time. Can’t Snape put some kind of a barrier around cauldrons or something? But maybe now that some of his precious Slytherins got hurt he will do something with all of this. So Harry really did a good thing, Mione.”

Both Hermione and Harry stared at him in shocked silence.

“I… didn’t think about that,” finally uttered Hermione.

Harry didn’t think about that either, but he pretended it was the plan all along. “Ron’s right. I scared Malfoy a little, and maybe Snape will start treating our safety more seriously now.”

He remembered Tom’s words from the Chamber. _The only way to make people think for once in their stupid life is to threaten them_ , he had said, and Harry could still agree with him on that.

“It’s _Professor_ Snape, both of you.” Hermione sighed tiredly. “But that was still extremely dangerous, Harry.”

“Yeah, I’ll be more careful next time,” agreed Harry. He was glad they’d stopped fighting.

“There won’t be a next time!”

Harry and Ron laughed, but Hermione’s eyes suddenly widened.

“You can be expelled for this, Harry!” she panicked. “I’m so sorry I was worried about Malfoy when —”

“He won’t be expelled,” snorted Ron.

“But you know what’s really worrying, Mione?” smiled Harry. “We might be late to Defense.”

“Oh no,” she gasped.

Fortunately, they got there just in time.

* * *

The Marauder’s Map was awesome, and Harry’s head was already swarmed by all the things he could do with it. Including slipping into Hogsmeade past dementors, obviously.

But there was one little thing that kept bothering him.

It _talked._

Like the diary.

The same diary that turned out to be Voldemort and tried to kill him.

Harry probably should hand down the Map to Dumbledore if he didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes. But… It was just so cool! And twins had it for years and nothing happened, right? Well, a lot of mischiefs happened — maybe Marauders were possessing them to do it? No, Fred and George were clearly capable of it all on their own.

Harry looked again at all the hidden passages and rooms and tracking dots of certain arseholish Professors.

Oh well. He would just burn the Map if it’ll start behaving weirdly.

* * *

Not for the first time Harry marvelled at how smart it was to always carry the Cloak on hand. He should have come up with this idea earlier, he thought as he was eavesdropping on the discussion about Sirius Black in Three Broomsticks.

“You don’t know the half of it, Rosmerta,” said Fudge grimly. “The worst he did isn’t widely known.”

Harry grinned from his hiding spot under the table right beside theirs. He knew even less than Madam Rosmerta and he couldn’t wait to learn more.

But the grin was slowly slipping from his face the longer he listened in.

“Never saw one without the other!”

“Quite the double act, Sirius Black and James Potter!” 

“I don’t think we’ve ever had such a pair of troublemakers!”

“You’d have thought Black and Potter were brothers!” 

“Oh, they were more than brothers,” sighed Professor McGonagall. “They were soulmates.”

_No._

“Soulmates?” gasped Madam Rosmerta. “But... James Potter was married!”

_No no no no no —_

“You’d think it’d be the first sign, wouldn’t you?” Fudge took a swig of his drink. “That something was not right.”

“So Black turned to You-Know-Who because of that?”

“Worse even than that, my dear.”

_It couldn’t be true._

“An immensely complex spell involving the magical concealment of a secret inside a single, living soul.”

“Somebody close to the Potters had been keeping You-Know-Who informed of their movements.”

“And Black was standing there laughing, with what was left of Pettigrew in front of him.”

Harry could hardly hear anything anymore behind the ringing in his ears.

_Sirius Black was his dad’s soulmate._

He didn’t even notice how Ron and Hermione dragged his still invisible form from under the table and towards the doors.

_Sirius Black betrayed his soulmate and gave him out to Voldemort._

“Harry?” Ron took the Cloak off him when they reached the edge of the village. “Harry, are you alright?”

_Sirius Black was his dad’s best friend and soulmate and Harry’s godfather, and he was the reason why Harry’s whole family was dead._

“I’ll kill him,” Harry felt himself saying.

“Harry! You can’t just say such things!” cried Hermione in a panicky voice. “We know you must be really upset, and it’s terrible what happened, but Aurors are already searching for him, you don’t need to get involved in all of this! —”

“Didn’t you hear?” Harry turned to look at her. “He betrayed my dad.”

“But Black’s not worth dying for,” said Ron.

“And there’s nothing you can do!” Hermione added hastily. “The dementors will catch Black and he’ll go back to Azkaban and — and serve him right!”

“Black isn’t affected by Azkaban like normal people are.”

“Harry, please, please be sensible,” Hermione’s eyes now shining with tears, “Black did a terrible, terrible thing, but don’t put yourself in danger, it’s what Black wants —”

“You’d be playing right into his hands if you went looking for him,” agreed Ron.

“He deserves it,” insisted Harry, but he was starting to feel it was all pointless.

“And he’ll go back to Azkaban for this or be Kissed! He will get what he deserves, Harry, but you shouldn’t do anything stupid before that!”

“You know what Pettigrew’s mother got back after Black had finished with him?” asked Ron seriously. “Dad told me — the Order of Merlin, First Class, and Pettigrew’s finger in a box. That was the biggest bit of him they could find. Black’s a madman, mate, and he’s dangerous.”

Harry wanted to argue, to explain, to make them see, but he looked closely at his friends and realised they wouldn’t understand.

They would never understand how it felt to hear your mum screaming just before she died every time you went near dementors. How it felt when it’s the only time you can remember her voice. How it felt to only know your parents from a few photos and history books. How it felt to be betrayed by your soulmate and see your hopes and dreams all crumbling down.

And it was a good thing that they couldn’t understand it.

“You’re right,” he finally sighed and lowered his head, refusing to look them in the eyes. “It’s too dangerous. He’s an adult and he killed all these Hit Wizards before he was captured, and I’m just a kid who —”

He could say nothing more because all the air was suddenly knocked out of his lungs when Hermione attacked him with a hug.

“It’s alright, Harry,” Hermione was whispering in his shoulder and she sounded like she was crying. “I mean, it’s not alright of course, but it _will_ be alright, and we’ll help you through it!...”

“Don’t go specifically looking for Black, mate,” said Ron, joining the hug. “But we’ll help you if he attacks first.”

Harry awkwardly hugged them back. Ron’s words sounded suspiciously like an offer to help Harry kill Black, but he didn’t voice that thought.

After all, Harry didn’t want his friends to become murderers for him. They were better than that.

But Harry? Harry was already a murderer. He had nothing to lose.

And behind the neverending ringing in his ears and the restless cracking of his eager magic in the air, he planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Remus teaching Harry the Patronus and we get to meet Sirius. End of the third year.  
> How do you think, would Harry kill Sirius before the man had the time to explain his side of the story? Questions, questions...
> 
> In my opinion, James and Sirius being soulmates makes way too much sense for me to ignore the opportunity. I'd explain in the next chapter how it happened that James still married Lily, but you're free to make suggestions, I'd love to hear them!  
> Also, can you guess my headcanon for werewolves and soulmates? Hint: don't trust everything Snape says.
> 
> And join me my new and shiny [tumblr blog](https://desertwaterfall.tumblr.com/)! It's mostly empty as of yet, but maybe you'd be interested to know my thoughts on writing and hp fandom.


	6. Worth living for

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Professor Lupin helps Harry to overcome his struggling with the Patronus Charm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My muse, sticking its nose from under the blanket where it was hiding in for the last several months: You know, now that you've more or less dealt with depression, you could start writing again.  
> Me, adjusting to the new job and new country and very much exhausted: Yeah, I was thinking about something soft and relaxing, like Tom and Harry getting drunk together and —  
> Muse: You should write about depression-inducing dementors.  
> Me: ...  
> Muse: ...  
> Me: You hate me, don't you?  
> Muse, smiling sweetly: Dementors it is, then!

“I don’t understand!” cried Harry, almost throwing his wand away in a fit of frustration. “I tried everything, and it just doesn’t work!”

“This is an advanced spell, Harry, it’s natural that you struggle,” calmly said Professor Lupin from the other side of the classroom, surrounded by spine-shaped floating candles. “The first time is the most difficult with the Patronus Charm, but it’ll be easier after that.”

They had lessons for several weeks already, but Harry still couldn’t produce even a mist, not saying a fully formed Patronus capable of stoping a Dementor. Harry didn’t know why he had thought it’d be easy to learn the spell, but it wasn’t. It was anything but, and he was starting to lose hope he could ever cast it.

“Maybe I just don’t have a happy enough memory for this,” Harry defeatedly whispered and didn’t raise his wand to try again. The candles flickered sadly around him.

Professor sighed and came closer. “I doubt this, but it’s true that it might be hard for you to understand what kind of memories this spell requires. There is a reason, after all, why it isn’t taught at Hogwarts.”

Harry shoved back the helplessness he felt. Lupin _had_ warned him that it might be too soon for him to learn such an advanced spell, but he hoped he could still manage it.

Maybe Snape was right, and Harry _was_ arrogant and stupid, beliving everything will always be his way.

“I guess I should just wait for a couple of years then, before trying again,” Harry shoved his wand in a sleeve and turned to leave.

“Oh, don’t give up so easily, Harry,” Professor softly scolded him from behind his back. “I was thinking we could try another approach if you want.”

Harry stopped, hesitating. He was tired of failing time after time for weeks to come, and he was beginning to believe all this struggle simply wasn’t worth it — after all, he could just avoid the dementors altogether and be done with it. But… What if he had to face the dementors while hunting for Black? They were hunting for him too, after all, so it wasn’t much of a stretch that it could happen.

He had to try at least. 

“All right,” Harry sighed and turned back, letting his wand slid back in his hand, despite not feeling particularly ready to face another failure yet.

Lupin smiled, his hair illuminated by the little flames floating around. “That’s the spirit!” he encouraged. “But you can take away your wand, we won’t need it for now.”

Professor walked to one of the desks and hopped to sit on it. He waved his hand, inviting Harry to do the same, and he did, hesitating a bit before hiding his wand again.

“Say, Harry,” Lupin started when they were comfortably seated across from each other, and candles slowly floated a bit closer, creating a soft feeling in the air around them. “What do you know about the origins of the Patronus Charm?”

“Erm… Nothing, sir?” Harry awkwardly confessed, wincing slightly in shame. Professor asked him to read about the Charm in his first lesson, but Harry kinda forgot to do that, sure that he won’t need all this boring theory.

But Professor didn’t seem to be disappointed. “It was the result of a life’s work of Robert Burton, British wizard,” he calmly explained. “He dedicated all his life to studying the Dementors, and in 1621 he invented the Patronus Charm, designed specifically to counter the effects Dementors have on us. It was only much later that others discovered the spell worked against a variety of other Dark Creatures, including Lethifolds — another creature no one knew how to counter before Patronus was invented.”

“Okay,” Harry nodded. He didn’t know what a Lethifold was, but he assumed it was something very dangerous. How was it relevant though?

“But at its core, Patronus is still a spell against Dementors,” Professor continued. “And I believe that to understand better how Patronus works, we need to understand what Dementors do — what exactly Patronus is protecting us from.”

“They make us remember our bad memoried,” Harry readily supplied, understanding now where Professor was heading to. “I thought that’s why we needed to use happy memories — to counter the bad ones.”

Professor raised his brows, “They make you see memories?” he asked, surprised. “That explains why they had such profound effect on you…”

Harry frowned, “It’s not normal? I thought that’s what they always do.”

“I can’t say it’s not normal,” mused Professor. “But it’s not their primary effect, no. Dementors induce certain emotions in us, and they only bring forward memories if they find something especially fitting among them.”

Harry tilted his head, curious. “Emotions? What kind of?”

“I think you can answer this by simply questioning yourself, what do you feel when confronted with these memories, Harry?”

“Anger,” he replied without hesitance.

Professor looked at him dubiously. “Anger? You sure?”

Harry bristled, thinking about Voldemort killing his family and Tom betraying him for no particular reason. “Yes, I’m _sure_!”

“Hm... Perhaps you could tell me about some of the memories you see?” Professor softly suggested. “You don’t have to, of course, but it might help.”

Harry hesitated. It felt personal, and he hasn’t told anyone about what he was seeing when near Dementors, not even his friends. But maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t hurt to share, if it could help him come closer to casting a Patronus.

Professor patiently waited, while Harry braced himself.

“One of the memories is about the night Voldemort killed my parents,” Harry started quietly, staring at the elaborated shadows the candles threw on the floor. “Mostly, it just screams. How my mum tried to run and hide in a room, but he broke the door. She —”, Harry swallowed when it suddenly became hard to speak, but he forced himself to continue. “She begged him not to kill me, tried to — tried to bargain her life for mine, but — he killed her, and then he killed me — I mean, tried to, and after that, it’s just pain and some strange green light.” It took Harry his second encounter with the Dementors to realise he had seen that green light before — in his dreams, this year as well as many years ago when he didn’t yet know he was a wizard and not a freak. “When Dementors attacked me at the Quidditch field, I heard dad too. He tried to stop Voldemort, but — well, obviously it didn’t end good.”

Harry fell silent. It was harder to talk about this than he thought.

“Oh,” he heard Professor exhale and raised his head to look at the man. His face was pale, and it was clear the memory had shaken him too. “That’s… Well…” The man sighed and closed his eyes, before collecting himself. “It’s sad to hear you had to live through this memory again. But, returning to what we’re trying to do… it doesn’t sound like an angry memory to me, Harry.”

“I’m angry at Voldemort!” suddenly shouted Harry, surprising even himself. “He killed my parents, and then he _dares_ to just —”

Harry stopped himself before he could say too much and turned away.

He remembered what Voldemort said after he found out that they were soulmates. _“If you just had stopped crying that night and opened your eyes, nothing would have happened”_ — as if it was his fault that the man came and killed his whole family! _Of course_ Harry was crying, he was just a _child_ who just saw his mother _die_! And Voldemort acted as if it was of no matter, as if he did _nothing_ wrong, and expected Harry to simply agree to handle him the Stone and run away with him or whatever else that bastard — 

“Harry,” Professor leaned over, gently putting his hand on boy’s shoulder, and Harry took a shaking breath in. He only now noticed the familiar ringing of the air around him and rattling of the candles’ risen flames — a clear sign his magic went out of control again. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down. 

“Sorry,” he said after flames went down to normal and he was sure his voice wouldn’t waver. Professor simply hummed and, opening his eyes, Harry saw him leaning back.

“You have full rights to be angry at You-Know-Who,” he calmly said as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. Harry was grateful for that. “I can’t fault you for that. But, Harry… When Dementors make us remember some of our worst memories, they bring forward the emotions we felt while living them, not the ones we feel remembering them now. Is it really anger that you feel when Dementors are near?”

Harry found it hard to not avoid Professor’s eyes when he shook his head, “No, it’s not. I feel… I…” He struggled to find the words to express it. “I feel sad? Devastated? I don’t know, it’s hard to remember, I was just one year old back then!”

“What about other memories?” asked Lupin. “You said it was only one of them.”

The image of Tom’s body dissolving into light flashed before his eyes. Harry shook it off, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Professor was silent for some time, before carefully asking, “It is a recent one, isn’t it?” 

Harry shot his head up in alarm, but Professor soon explained, “Dementors induce the worst effect on us when they have something recent to pull on in our memory. Now, I don’t ask you to tell me what this memory is about, but I ask you to think about what it makes you feel — or, more exactly, what it made you feel when it was happening?”

Harry let out a frustrated sigh, turning away from Professor and looking around the classroom aimlessly. He really, really didn’t want to think about that particular memory. Sure, Harry made his peace with the fact that he killed Tom — in the end, that was a right thing to do, and _Tom deserved it_ — but it didn’t mean the memory of Tom dying was a pleasant one.

“I was angry,” he finally said, still not looking at the Professor and focusing instead on the candles silently floating around. “And hurt. Someone I trusted betrayed me and I just —” he stopped himself in time, but unvoiced words still echoed in his head, _and I just killed him, thrust a basilisk fang in his soul and watched him scream and writhe and dissolve into light and dust until he died._ He shook it off and instead said a less painful truth. “I just didn’t care much about anything.”

Harry fell silent. He didn’t have anything else to say, and so he just kept watching at little flames slowly melting away the waxen bones, vertebra by vertebra, and waited for the Professor to tell him again that angry memories were not what Dementors induced — but it never came.

“What changed?” came the unexpected question instead, and Harry finally turned back to find a slightly concerned look at Professor’s face.

“What do you mean?” Harry frowned in confusion.

“You said you didn’t care about anything,” carefully said Lupin. “What changed?”

“I survived,” blurted Harry.

He regretted his lapse of control over his tongue immediately, seeing how man’s eyes widened in what was now not just a slight concern.

Before Professor could tell anything, Harry rushed to explain, “It’s fine now! I’m fine. Honestly. It’s in the past, no big deal anymore. But yeah, it’s a rough memory,” Harry laughed a bit nervously at such an understatement. “Probably why dementors choose it, right?”

Lupin eyed him worryingly but thankfully decided to not ask Harry for the details. Instead, he collected himself and softly said, “Yes, Harry. These feelings are _exactly_ the reason why Dementors brought that memory forward.”

Harry perked up, curious, “How so?”

Lupin hesitated, and for a second he too looked away at slowly burning candles, before turning back to Harry and starting to explain.

“As Robert Burton put it, the Dementors are the embodiment of melancholy. Of course, many argue with this statement, even now, saying that it’s a terrible understatement and that Dementors do much worse than simply making us feel sad. I believe these people miss the point Burton tried to make, because melancholy is not the same as sadness, but some people struggle to grasp the difference. I guess, one could only envy them for that,” Professor smiled sadly.

“And what is the difference then?” asked Harry, who wasn’t sure about it either.

Professor looked at him, and Harry felt like the man wasn’t sure if he should elaborate. But after the minute of hesitance, he did, and Harry wasn’t sure that he simply imagined how candles’ flames flickered away for just a moment, plunging the room into the darkness.

“Melancholy robs us of reasons to live,” Professor said. “It makes the world dull and grey so that nothing is interesting anymore and nothing can bring happiness back to our lives. This is what Dementors do too — they take away memories of everything we enjoy, replace them with our worst ones and make us believe that the life is not worth living for.”

For several seconds, they sit there in silence, Harry processing what was just said. But then Professor leaned forward, and his eyes suddenly caught the reflection of little flames dancing around them without all the care in the world about the heavy topic they were discussing.

“Now, Harry,” Lupin softly smiled, his eyes coloured in gold, “how do you think, what would be the core idea behind the spell, specifically designed to battle melancholy?”

And suddenly everything clicked into place.

“It would try to remind us that it’s not true. That the life _is_ worth living for,” Harry’s eyes widened, and he wondered how he could not see it before. “The happy memories.”

“Yes,” Professor’s smiled wider. “Happy memories. Things that could make the world bright again when everything seems pointless.”

Professor leaned back and nimbly hopped off the desk. He casually walked to the centre of the classroom, where they were training before. “Of course, it’s easier said than done to just remember the good times we had before and expert everything to become better instantly,” he said as he made candles shine brighter with a simple flick of his wand. “Thankfully, that’s what magic is for!”

Harry jumped off the desk too and joined Professor at the improvised stage, the invitation clear. “I’m not sure yet about the memories I should use, sir,” he confessed, but despite the hesitance, Harry still drew his wand and stood into position.

“I don’t expect you to cast a fully corporal Patronus right away now, Harry,” Professor quietly laughed. “But I want you to try and see if this new understanding helps. Think about the last memory you told me about — what happened between then and now? What makes you _care_?” He sent the candles to fly a bit further away from where they were crowded around them, to clear the area for Harry. “It doesn’t even need to be something happy yet, just things you find worth living for. The Patronus won’t be as powerful this way, of course, but it might get you started.”

Lupin stood aside, leaving before Harry only empty space and open view on frost-covered windows and flames reflecting on their surface.

What Harry found worth living for?

When he first learnt that Ron saved him in the Chamber, Harry felt angry, because he didn’t intend to survive. He only cared to live long enough to bring Tom down with him and nothing more. He didn’t know what to do with his life after that.

But now? How could he regret it now? 

He thought about three wonderful weeks spent in Diagon Alley alone. About the exhilarating feeling of flying even despite the ice rain sheets in the air. About freedom of walking around the empty castle in the night under the Cloak, exploring all the hidden doors and secret corridors.

He thought about Ron’s and Hermione’s fierce hugs and how they told him they would always stay by him no matter what. About Dumbledore calmly explaining to him that he was not a monster. About Ginny calling Tom a bitch.

He survived. And it was _worth it_.

_“Expecto Patronum!”_

And after weeks of failures, he finally could see a soft silver mist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My muse, lazily sprawled on the blanket: Now you see why it was a great idea?  
> Me, typing the last words: It still was really fucking emotionally draining, you know!  
> Muse, gently smiling: But it was worth it in the end, was it not?  
> Me, fuming: No. I hate you.  
> Muse: I love you too, honey.  
> ___  
> So yeah. I'm sorry for almost half a year without updates, and that this one is fairly short. I'll try to get better soon.  
> Life has been a mess, as you probably gathered.
> 
> Next chapter should finally be the last one in the third year, and if everything goes as planned I should write and post it next week. And oh boy, am I excited for what I have planned for the fourth year! 
> 
> Your comments make my muse stay awake, and I can't say how much I'm grateful to everyone who kept reading, kudosing and commenting my works over the long break I had. Honestly, you're the best people in the world!


End file.
